Authors & Works cited in this section (citations below):

Abram, David. Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology
Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life
Ainslie, George. “Thought Experiments That Explore Where Controlled Experiments
Anderson, Michael, M. Richardson & A. Chemero. Eroding the Boundaries of Cognition:
Bacon, Francis. Novum Organum: Book I.
Barandiaran, Xabier & A. Moreno. “Adaptivity: From Metabolism to Behavior.”
Bedau, Mark. “What is Life?”
Benedict, Ruth. Patterns of Culture.
Bentley, R. A. & H. Maschner. “Avalanche of Ideas.”
Bergen, Benjamin. Louder Than Words: The New Science of How the Mind
Bickhard, Mark. “Systems and Process Metaphysics.”
Bintliff, John. “Searching for Structure in the Past–or Was It ‘One Damn Thing
Bishop, Robert. “Metaphysical and Epistemological Issues in Complex Systems
Boyd, Brian. On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction
Boyer, Pascal. “Cognitive Predispositions and Cultural Transmission.”
Boyer, Pascal. “What Are Memories For? Functions of Recall in Cognition and Culture.
Bunge, Mario. Chasing reality: Strife over realism
Bunge, Mario. Emergence and Convergence: Qualitative Novelty and the Unity of Knowledge
Calvert, Jane & J. Fujimura. “Calculating life? Dueling discourses in interdisciplinary
Clark, Andy. “Soft Selves and Ecological Control.”
Clarke, Ellen & S. Okasha. “Species and Organisms: What Are the Problems?
Collins, Randall. Interaction Ritual Chains.
Connolly, William. 2011. A World of Becoming
Conrad, Michael. “The geometry of evolution.”
Coolidge, Frederick & T. Wynn. The Rise of Homo sapiens: The Evolution of Modern
Cupit, C.G. “The marriage of science and spirit: dynamic systems theory and the development
Currie, W. “Units of nature or processes across scales? The ecosystem concept at age 75
Davies, Paul S. “What Kind of Agent Are We? A Naturalistic Framework for the Study
De Jaegher, Hanne & T. Froese. “On the Role of Social Interaction in Individual Agency
De Zengotita, T. Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It
Dennett, Daniel. “My Body Has a Mind of its Own.
Descola, Philippe. The Ecology of Others
Donald, Merlin. “The slow process: A hypothetical cognitive adaptation for distributed
Feynman, Richard, R. Leighton & M. Sands. The Feynman Lectures on Physics:
Fox, Warwick. A Theory of General Ethics: Human Relationships, Nature, and
Franklin, Adrian. “A Choreography of Fire: A Posthumanist Account of Australians
Fuchs, Stephan. Against Essentialism: A Theory of Culture and Society
Gaukroger, Stephen. Objectivity: A Very Short Introduction
Gelman, Susan. “Essentialist Reasoning about the Biological World.
Gros, Claudius. Complex and Adaptive Dynamical Systems: A Primer
Halley, J. & Winkler. “Classification of Emergence and its Relation to Self-Organization
Halley, J. & Winkler. “Consistent concepts of Self-organization and Self-assembly
Hofmeyr, Jan-Hendrik. “The biochemical factory that autonomously fabricates itself:
Hooker, Cliff. “Introduction to Philosophy of Complex Systems: A
Jacob, Francois. The Logic of Living Systems: A History of Heredity
Kauffman, Stuart. Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion
Keller, Evelyn Fox. “Contenders for life at the dawn of the twenty-first century:
Knoblich, G. & Sebanz. Evolving intentions for social interaction: from entrainment
Layton, Robert. “Agency, Structuration, and Complexity.”
Lisiecka, Karolina. “Group as a Unit of Analysis.”
Lloyd, Dan. “Civil Schizophrenia.”
Lucas, Mikael, L. Laplaze M. Bennett. “Plant systems biology: network matters
MacKinnon, K. & Fuentes. “Primate Social Cognition, Human Evolution, and Niche
McGlade, James. “The Map is Not the Territory: Complexity, Complication,
McNeely, Ian & L. Wolverton. Reinventing Knowledge: From Alexandria to the Internet
Mendoza-Denton, R. & Mischel. “Integrating System Approaches to Culture and Personality
Mirolli, Marco & D. Parisi. “Language as a Cognitive Tool.
Moreno, Alvaro. “A systemic approach to the origin of biological organization
Moreno, Alvaro et al. “The Impact of the Paradigm of Complexity on the Foundational
Morowitz, Harold. 1968. Energy Flow in Biology
Morsella, E. et al. “Cognitive and neural components of the phenomenology of agency
Newman, Stuart. “Complexity in Organismal Evolution.”
Nolfi, Stefano, T. Ikegami & J. Tani. “Editorial: Behavior and Mind as a Complex Adaptive
Olsen, Bjornar. In Defense of Things: Archaeology and the Ontology of Objects.
Paperin, Greg et al. “Dual-phase evolution in complex adaptive systems
Pettit, Philip. “Neuroscience and Agent-Control.”
Pickering, Andrew. The Mangle in Practice: Science, Society, and Becoming
Popa, Radu. “Necessity, Futility and the Possibility of Defining Life are all Embedded
Portmann, Adolf. A Zoologist Looks at Humankind.
Ross, Don. “The Economic and Evolutionary Basis of Selves.
Ross, Don. “Introduction: Science catches the Will.”
Silberstein, M. & Chemero. “Complexity and Extended Phenomenological-Cognitive
Simon, Dan et al. “The Redux of Cognitive Consistency Theories: Evidence Judgments
Skewes, J.C. & C. Hooker. “Bio-agency and the problem of action
Skyrms, Brian. Evolution of the Social Contract.
Smith-Acuna, Shelly. Systems Theory in Action: Applications to Individual, Couples,
Sole, Ricard. Phase Transitions
Spivey, Michael et al. “The Phase Transition in Human Cognition
Spivey, Michael. The Continuity of Mind
Stahel, Andri. “Complexity, oikonomia and political economy
Sumpter, D.J.T. “The Principles of Collective Animal Behaviour
Thacker, Eugene. After Life
Thalos, Mariam. “The Sources of Behavior: Toward a Naturalistic, Control Account
Thalos, Mariam. “Two Conceptions of Fundamentality.
Tilley, Christopher, W. Keane, et al (Eds). Handbook of Material culture
Toepfer, G. “Teleology and its constitutive role for biology as the science of organized
Turner, Bryan. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory
Vallacher, Robin. “Dynamical Social Psychology: Finding Order in the Flow of Human
Vazquez, Margarita & Liz. “Models as Points of View: The Case of System Dynamics
Vollmer, Fred. Agent Causality
Wan, Poe Yu-ze. “Emergence a la Systems Theory: Epistemological Totalausschluss
Waters, Dennis. “From extended phenotype to extended affordance: distributed language
Wegner, Daniel & B. Sparrow. “The Puzzle of Coaction
Wertsch, James. “Collective Memory.
Wilson, Deirdre & D. Sperber. Meaning and Relevance.
Wimsatt, William. “Aggregativity: Reductive Heuristics for Finding Emergence
Zhegunov, Gennadiy. The Dual Nature of Life

Citations collected in 2013 (works listed above):
 

“In steady state systems, the flow of energy through the system from a source to a sink will lead to at least one cycle in the system.” Morowitz, Harold. 1968. Energy Flow in Biology. Academic Press. P. 33.


“Sociologists have recognized the importance of Foucault’s concept of governmentality as a paradigm for understanding the micro-processes of administration and control within which self discipline and social regulation are integrated. The concept of governmentality, which appears late in Foucault’s political writing, provides an integrating theme that addressed the socio-political practices or technologies by which the self is constructed through discipline. Governmentality has become the common foundation of modern political rationality in which the administrative systems of the state have been extended in order to maximize productive control over the demographic processes of the population. This extension of administrative rationality was first concerned with demographic processes of birth, morbidity and death, and later with the psychological health of the population.... Governmentality ultimately refers to the ways in which bodies are produced, cultivated and disciplined.

“As a generic term for thee micro-power relations whereby bodies are controlled by the state through local institutions and authorities, governmentality has been defined as ‘the ensemble formed by the institutions, procedures, analyses and reflections, the calculations and tactics, that allow the exercise of this very specific albeit complex form of power, which has as its target population, as its principal form of knowledge political economy, and as its essential technical means apparatuses of security’. The importance of this definition is that historically the power of the modern state has been less concerned with sovereignty over things (land and wealth) and more concerned with maximizing the productive power of populations, the human body and reproduction.” Turner, Bryan. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory, 3rd Edition. 2008. Sage Publications. Pp. 3-4. Subquote is from Foucault, Michel. 2001. “Governmentality.” Power; The Essential Works 3. Pp. 201-222. Pp. 219-20.


“These Aristotelian themes – body, habitus and virtue – have also been important in the development of the work of Pierre Bourdieu. In summary, there are broadly two dominant traditions in the sociology of the body. There is either the cultural decoding of the body as a system of meaning that has a definite structure existing separately from the intentions and conceptions of individuals, or there is the phenomenological study of embodiment that attempts to understand human practices that are organized around the life course (of birth, maturation, reproduction and death). Sociologists including Bourdieu have offered various solutions to this persistent tension between meaning and experience on the one hand, and between representation and practice on the other. Bourdieu’s development of the notions of habitus and practice in Outline of a Theory of Practice provides a theoretical strategy for looking simultaneously at how status difference is inscribed on the body and how we experience the world through our bodies that are ranked in terms of their cultural capital. The reconciliation of these traditions can be assisted by distinguishing between the idea of the body as representation, and embodiment as practice and experience.” Turner, Bryan. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory, 3rd Edition. 2008. Sage Publications. P. 15.


“By contrast, Epicurean hedonism attempts to differentiate between pleasures with the aid of reason. Marcuse thus suggested that the traditional opposition between reason and desire was false, since, in the case of Epicurus ‘reason is made a pleasure’ and ‘pleasure is made reasonable’. Capitalism, however, involves the splitting of reason and pleasure by restricting pleasures to the sphere of consumption and harnessing reason to the needs of technical production.” Turner, Bryan. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory, 3rd Edition. 2008. Sage Publications. P. 45. Subquote is from Marcuse, H. Negations. 1968. London. P. 171.


“Furthermore, we cannot discuss the body without having a central concern for intentions: the objective, ‘outside’ world is always connected to my body in terms of my body’s actions or potential actions on it.” Turner, Bryan. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory, 3rd Edition. 2008. Sage Publications. P. 51.


“Paracelsus in particular was conscious of the stark incompatibility between the Christian ethic of love and the humanist medical tradition which he regarded as a thin disguise for acquisitiveness. Paracelsus’s aim was to ‘oust the false, pagan, Galenic and Arabic teachings of the schools’ with the Christian doctrine of love, and his religious beliefs constituted not only a radical change in the doctor-patient relationship, but also a view of medical practice which was minimalist rather than interventionist. The least medicine was always the best medicine since recovery from illness was ultimately part of God’s will and subject to the natural healing processes of the body.” Turner, Bryan. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory, 3rd Edition. 2008. Sage Publications. P. 69. Subquote is from Coulter, H.L. Divided Legacy: A History of the Schism in Medical Thought. 1977. Vol. 1. P. 356.


“Following Foucault it is important to make a distinction between the regulation of populations and the discipline of the body. Following Featherstone, it is equally important to make a distinction between the interior of the body as an environment and the exterior of the body as the medium by which an individual represents the self in public. At least initially, these dichotomies are proposed as a heuristic device for constructing a general theory of the body and for locating theories of the body. At an empirical level, these four dimensions cannot be nicely separated, but this fact does not expunge the analytic value of the model.... The argument is that the Hobbesian problem of order as a geometry of bodies has four related dimensions which are the reproduction of populations through time and their regulation in space, the restraint of desire as an interior body problem and the representation of bodies in social space as an issue concerning the surface of the body. In Parsonian terminology, every social system has to solve these four sub-problems.” Turner, Bryan. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory, 3rd Edition. 2008. Sage Publications. Pp. 81-2. References are to: Foucault, M. 1981. The History of Sexuality, Volume one: The Will to Knowledge. Penguin. Featherstone, M. 1982. “The body in consumer culture.” Theory, Culture & Society. 1:18-33.


“The negative effect of urban crowding [according to Rousseau] was to make men too dependent on the opinion of others, and their proper self-respect (amour de soi) degenerates into selfishness (amour-propre).” Turner, Bryan. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory, 3rd Edition. 2008. Sage Publications. P. 92.


“Urbanization threatened the code of impersonal civilité with shallow intimacies, unregulated by respect for status and position. Paradoxically, the growth of intimacy entails a decline in sociability. The courtly tradition of manners had permitted communal sociability between strangers by discouraging selfish expressions of intimate behaviour; intimacies are socially exclusive, but also express lack of genuine feeling. By contrast, a secular urban society generates a cult of intimacy and affectivity between strangers which offsets the threat of anonymity and which attempts to deal with public space by replacing courtly values of impersonal civilité. In the nineteenth century, anxieties about seductive intimacies between anonymous strangers found their symbolic expression in female agoraphobia.” Turner, Bryan. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory, 3rd Edition. 2008. Sage Publications. P. 95.


“Because the body is the most potent metaphor of society, it is not surprising that disease is the most salient metaphor of structural crisis. All disease is disorder – metaphorically, literally, socially and politically.” Turner, Bryan. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory, 3rd Edition. 2008. Sage Publications. P. 100.


“The sciences which seek to improve the human condition through liberal values – psychiatry, sociology, penology, biology – are themselves inextricably expressions of domination; they seek to know in order to organize.... Knowledge, which promises liberty, has its origin in power.

“Secondly, Foucault shares with Nietzsche a distrust of the pretence of reason, especially Cartesianism and the positivist sciences such as Darwinistic biology. Descartes suppressed insanity as a necessary requirement for reason itself. Dreams and madness are both forms of error, but they stand in a different relationship to truth. Whether or not I am dreaming, 2 + 2 = 4, but reason in order to exist must expel the possibility of madness. Men may be mad, but thought itself cannot be. Descartes thus stood at a peculiar conjuncture where the possibility of ‘unreasonable Reason’ and ‘reasonable Unreason’ disappeared.” Turner, Bryan. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory, 3rd Edition. 2008. Sage Publications. Pp. 135-6.


“The traditional diet was directed at regulating physiological processes, which were seen to be the springs of irrational passions. In the disease metaphor of social pathology, unregulated appetites produced the unregulated society. There is, however, an important transition in the social significance of dieting from the eighteenth-century world of Cheyne to the modern world of mass consumption. In a consumer culture, the body assumes a new social and individual significance. It becomes the site of personal strategies of health.... However, in the absence of a coherent system of communal, religious values, there is no obvious answer to the question ‘Health for what?’. In the world of Cornaro, Cheyne, and Wesley, the individual exercised a stewardship over the body under the eye of God. The religious calling in the world included a responsibility for personal health as the basis for other achievements – the mastery of the soul and the passions. In a society where such religious notions play very little part in general culture, health becomes itself the justification for dieting. The modern location of dieting is almost the reverse of its eighteenth-century position. The purpose of the modern diet of consumer society is the production of desire – the preservation of life to enhance the enjoyment of pleasures, the increase of sexuality and the extension of enjoyments:... Whereas religio-medical dieting sought to achieve the control of the inner body – the digestive roots of passion – by purgation and restraint, the consumer diet seeks to enhance the surface of the body – the cosmetic signs of desirability – by the practices of body maintenance.” Turner, Bryan. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory, 3rd Edition. 2008. Sage Publications. P. 147.


“Cosmetics are a universal practice in human societies but their role in Western society is utterly different from their traditional use in pre-modern societies. Within a traditional social context, cosmetic decorations symbolized the incorporation of the individual within the social group and gave expression to common values and communal practices. Cosmetics communicate traditional symbols and signs; changes in personal cosmetics normally signify changes in social status, age of social membership. Female-body decorations signified a woman’s changing personal status from puberty through marriage to widowhood. By contrast, Western cosmetics are largely determined by commercialized fashion and by individualized sexuality. Cosmetics have lost their rootedness in the sacred cosmos which connected cosmetic therapy with medicine. Cosmetics have been secularized along with the secularization of society. Cosmetic decoration does signify sexuality, but sexual decorations have been standardized by the calculative hedonism which is required by mass production. Cosmetic practices are indicative of a new presentational self in a society where the self is no longer lodged in formal roles but has to be validated through a competitive public space.” Turner, Bryan. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory, 3rd Edition. 2008. Sage Publications. Pp. 148-9.


“Foucault’s theory of knowledge has in many respects the weaknesses which characterize any dominant ideology thesis; it conflates the question of the logic of discourse with the issue of its social effects. We cannot assume that because, for example, modern advertising is based on a discourse of cosmetics, that consumers invariably embrace its rules of production.” Turner, Bryan. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory, 3rd Edition. 2008. Sage Publications. P. 150.


“In Western thought, the human body is an ancient metaphor of political institutions, and was the dominant mode of theorizing political behaviour up to the seventeenth century when the doctrine of individual property rights was fully articulated. The metaphor of the body was particularly important in the theory of kingship. The king had two bodies, a material body which was subject to corruption and decay, and a spiritual body which was symbolic of the life of the community.” Turner, Bryan. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory, 3rd Edition. 2008. Sage Publications. P. 151.


“If orgy and asceticism are culturally mediated and social activities, bulimia and anorexia nervosa are individual solutions to social problems and they are more closely dominated by the routines of physiology.” Turner, Bryan. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory, 3rd Edition. 2008. Sage Publications. P. 154.


“On the basis of these arguments, Boorse came eventually to identify three separate types of ‘unhealth’. These are disease, which refers to ‘some deviation from a biological norm’, illness which is a personal experience of unhealth, and sickness, which is a social role expressing the public dimension of unhealth as in the concept of ‘the sick role’.” Turner, Bryan. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory, 3rd Edition. 2008. Sage Publications. P. 175. Reference is to Boorse, C. 1976. “What a theory of mental health should be.” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour. 6:61-84.


“Diseases belong inside nature; illnesses, inside culture. Human beings, because they are ambiguously located in both nature and culture, are subject to both diseases and illnesses.” Turner, Bryan. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory, 3rd Edition. 2008. Sage Publications. P. 176.


“The nub of the argument is that medicine has replaced religion as the social guardian of morality. This replacement involves a ‘medicalization’ of the body and society.

“In pre-modern societies, classificatory distinctions between disease, deviance and sin are either non-existent or underdeveloped. The aetiology of physical disease and social deviance was sought in the moral history and condition of the individual. Health and morality were fundamentally united in practice and in theory.” Turner, Bryan. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory, 3rd Edition. 2008. Sage Publications. P. 179.


“The study of the body has presupposed a process of secularization which has transferred the body from an arena of sacred forces to the mundane reality of diet, cosmetics, exercise and preventive medicine.” Turner, Bryan. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory, 3rd Edition. 2008. Sage Publications. P. 182.


“The transformation of nature and the development of the human species occur under definite social and historical circumstances. The basic features of this position were expressed by Marx with his usual directness and brevity:

“Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by the physical organisation. By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their actual material life.”

“Nature is not a thing-in-itself, but an extension of man – the inorganic body of human agents – and nature becomes a thing-for-man. Nature exists as an external, objective reality, but it is also transformed by labour and socially appropriated, becoming an internal reality of human development.” Turner, Bryan. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory, 3rd Edition. 2008. Sage Publications. Pp. 195-6. Subquote is Marx, K. & F. Engels. 1974. The German Ideology. London. P. 42


“Sociological theory can be said to be organized around a number of perennial contrasts – agency and structure, the individual and society, nature and culture, mind and body. Solutions to these contrasts – voluntarism and determinism – are simultaneously premature and lop-sided, because the contradictions are theoretically creative and productive. We can exercise agency, but we do so in the context of massive structural restraints. We are individuals, but our individuality is socially produced. Human beings as organic systems are part of nature, but their natural environment is also the product of historical practices. ‘Nature’ is also a product of culture. We are conscious beings, but that consciousness can only be realized through embodiment. The importance of the sociology of the body is that it lies at the axis of these theoretical tensions and it is thus a necessary component of any genuine sociology. The difficulty of providing a coherent account of what we mean by ‘the body’ is an effect of these theoretic problems.” Turner, Bryan. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory, 3rd Edition. 2008. Sage Publications. P. 209.


“... the problem with structuralism is that it represents what might be called ‘discourse determinism’.” Turner, Bryan. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory, 3rd Edition. 2008. Sage Publications. P. 210.


“The economic crisis of late capitalism has thus given a new twist to the Malthusian paradox: while human pleasures, being variable, grow by a geometric ratio, the capacity for consumption grows by an arithmetic ratio. The gap between expectations and consumption represents a level of relative deprivation which is the focus of social disequilibrium. It is for this reason that the government of society requires a government of the body.” Turner, Bryan. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory, 3rd Edition. 2008. Sage Publications. P. 211.


“With the development of modern technology, art becomes reproducible, is removed from its cultic setting, and begins to shed its aura. The uniqueness and authenticity of a work of art is a function of its embeddedness in the social context of a stable traditional culture. The history of art can be seen as an endless contradiction between this cultic or sacred value and its exhibition or market value.” Turner, Bryan. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory, 3rd Edition. 2008. Sage Publications. P. 213. Referring to essay by Walter Benjamin, “The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility.” 2002. Selected Works. Cambridge, MA. Pp. 101-133.


“If our embodiment is the ultimate source of our common sociability, then changes to our embodiment must have implications for both vulnerability and interconnectedness. Society is being profoundly influenced by the recent micro-biological revolution.” Turner, Bryan. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory, 3rd Edition. 2008. Sage Publications. P. 242.


“In this respect, embodiment is a life process that requires the learning of body techniques – walking, sitting, dancing, eating, and so forth. Embodiment is the ensemble of these corporal practices that produces and gives ‘a body’ its place in everyday life. Embodiment places particular bodies within a social habitus. Secondly, embodiment requires the production of a sensuous and practical presence in the life-world.... Thirdly, embodiment is a collective project because it takes place in a life-world that is already social. Embodiment is not an isolated project of the individual; it is located within a social world of interconnected social actors. Finally, while it is the process of making and becoming a body, it is also the project of making a self. Embodiment and enselfment are mutually dependent and reinforcing processes. The self involves a corporal project within a specific social nexus where the continuous self depends on successful embodiment, a social habitus and memory. Following both Marx and Bourdieu, embodiment and enselfment always take place in specific spatial contexts, and habitus must be a set of practices in a particular location; it must, we might say, secure emplacement. Thus, the sociological notion of a ‘body’ involves three related processes: embodiment, enselfment and emplacement.” Turner, Bryan. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory, 3rd Edition. 2008. Sage Publications. P. 245.


“Using a simple tracking task that can be performed alone or together, Knoblich & Jordan investigated whether teams are able to coordinate their actions with respect to future outcomes of their joint activity as successfully as a single actor performing the whole task alone. The results showed that co-actors took their respective actions into account and learned to reciprocally adjust their actions so that their coordination was almost indistinguishable from the coordination individuals could achieve with their two hands. In this task, good coordination could only be achieved through integrating the effects of one’s own and the other’s actions into a prediction of the joint outcome. Thus, the findings provide behavioural evidence for the parallel simulation assumption.” Knoblich, Guenther & N. Sebanz. 2008. “Evolving intentions for social interaction: from entrainment to joint action.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 363, 2021-31. P. 2026. Reference is Knoblich, Guenther, & S. Jordan. 2003. “Action coordination in individuals and groups: learning anticipatory control.” J. Exp. Psychol. Learn. 29: 1006-16.


“We concur with Clark that language can be regarded as an extremely powerful coordination device for joint action, cementing the self-other distinction, defining different potential roles for actors and extending the temporal horizon of joint activities.” Knoblich, Guenther & N. Sebanz. 2008. “Evolving intentions for social interaction: from entrainment to joint action.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B. 363, 2021-31. P. 2027.


“... every object that biology studies is a system of systems.” Jacob, Francois. 1974. The Logic of Living Systems: A History of Heredity. Allen Lane. Quoted in Lucas, Mikael, L. Laplaze M. Bennett. 2011. “Plant systems biology: network matters.” Plant, Cell and Environment. 34, 535-553. P. 535.


“A motif is a pattern of node and edges occurring at a higher-than-chance ratio in a complex network. Motifs have been found to be associated with specific behaviour of systems, and are dependent on the topology of the networks. Two important examples are feedback loops and the feed-forward loop family....

“The two most common feed-forward loops act, respectively, as a signal-dampener (filtering out small variation of input signal) and pulse generator (amplifying small variation of input signal).” Lucas, Mikael, L. Laplaze & M. Bennett. 2011. “Plant systems biology: network matters.” Plant, Cell and Environment. 34, 535-553. P. 538.


“At the tissue scale, network edges express interaction and exchanges between cells through direct cell-to-cell contact. These interactions can be chemical exchanges of matters or information occurring through the interface between cells, in which case the function associated with the edges are usually flux equations expressing actives and/or passives transports. The interactions between cells can also be physical interactions. Mechanical forces play an important role in shaping biological tissues.” Lucas, Mikael, L. Laplaze & M. Bennett. 2011. “Plant systems biology: network matters.” Plant, Cell and Environment. 34, 535-553. P. 542.


“When considering physical interactions, the geometry of the network is as important as its topology. In order to respect the proper geometry and topology of living tissues, tissue systems can be derived from the microscopy datasets by a process of manual or automatic image segmentation and digitization. Edges are then associated with spatial information. The[se] can be moreover associated with springs-based models in spatially dynamic models. Spring-based models are used to represent the forces acting on and in the cells (e.g. turgor pressure). In more advanced models, tensorial fields actually cover the whole network in space in order to reproduce the mechanical forces acting in all points of a tissue.” Lucas, Mikael, L. Laplaze & M. Bennett. 2011. “Plant systems biology: network matters.” Plant, Cell and Environment. 34, 535-553. P. 542.


“From a general point of view, the dynamism of tissue scale systems is one of their most important features. In particular, the aims of tissue scale systems to consider cellular division and growth as well as physiology are related to a specific class of mathematical entities, termed DS2 for ‘Dynamic System on a Dynamic Structure.’ The most important property of tissues and of the corresponding DS2 models is the existence of feedback loops between the structural and the physiological levels of the considered systems. These feedback loops can drive the emergence of new properties at the tissue scale, very much like the feedback loops at the molecular level induce specific original behaviour in gene networks motifs.” Lucas, Mikael, L. Laplaze & M. Bennett. 2011. “Plant systems biology: network matters.” Plant, Cell and Environment. 34, 535-553. Pp. 542-3.


“Each of these two approaches [a phenotype interacting with its environment and as a collection of organs building according to internal rules] can be viewed as a systems approach in its own right. We choose here not to address pure ecophysiological or architectural systems individually but rather to focus on the interface between these two approaches. Models displaying both architectural and (eco)physiological properties lie in the domain of Functional-Structural Plant Models (FSPM). These models are the whole-plant equivalent of the tissue-scale systems models previously described, linking the spatial development of the plant with its physiology.” Lucas, Mikael, L. Laplaze & M. Bennett. 2011. “Plant systems biology: network matters.” Plant, Cell and Environment. 34, 535-553. P. 543.


“The majority of plant-scale FSPM models rely on discretization of the considered system and its environment. Nodes thus correspond at this scale to plant segments or organs whose actual sizes depend on the chosen discretization resolution, and to volume elements of the environment when applicable.” Lucas, Mikael, L. Laplaze & M. Bennett. 2011. “Plant systems biology: network matters.” Plant, Cell and Environment. 34, 535-553. P. 543.


“We choose to distinguish only four specific scales and their associated networks: the network of molecules in subcellular systems, the network of cells in tissue systems, the network of organs in whole plant systems, and finally the network of environmental, physiological and plant modules in crop systems. However, biological objects are continuous physical entities and there is no reason why each scale could not be considered in interaction with the other scales. Arguably, the greatest challenge in the future for systems biology will be for system approaches to take into account this hierarchy of biological systems.” Lucas, Mikael, L. Laplaze & M. Bennett. 2011. “Plant systems biology: network matters.” Plant, Cell and Environment. 34, 535-553. P. 547.


“For now, all published models only span over two scales at most. Notwithstanding our current computational limitations, it is conceivable that in the future ‘Matriochka models’ (Russian dolls models) will be developed that first span from the sub-cellular to the plant scale, and then to the population and beyond, eventually considering entire ecosystems at a time.” Lucas, Mikael, L. Laplaze & M. Bennett. 2011. “Plant systems biology: network matters.” Plant, Cell and Environment. 34, 535-553. P. 547.


“Crutchfield’s suggestion that organisms utilize emergence to make sense of the world is congruent with Crutchfield and Shalizi’s concept of emergence as a measure of relative predictive efficiency.” Halley, Julianne & D. Winkler. “Classification of Emergence and its Relation to Self-Organization.” 2008. Complexity. Vol. 13, No. 5, 10-15. P. 13. References are: Crutchfield, J. “The calculi of emergence: Computation, dynamics, and induction.” Phys D. 1994. 75: 11-54. Crutchfield, J. & C. Shalizi. “Thermodynamic depth of causal states: Objective complexity via minimal representations.” Phys. Rev. E. 1999. 59: 275-83.


“The distinction we make between simple and complex concerns the onset of self-organization through increased driving from equilibrium. Simple systems are those that are at or near equilibrium and may exhibit simple emergent properties. Complex systems are nonequilibrium systems displaying self-organization, and the collective properties of these systems are complex emergent properties.” Halley, Julianne & D. Winkler. “Classification of Emergence and its Relation to Self-Organization.” 2008. Complexity. Vol. 13, No. 5, 10-15. P. 13.


“Although self-organization implies a nonequilibrium process, self-assembly is reserved for spontaneous processes tending toward equilibrium.” Halley, Julianne & D. Winkler. “Consistent concepts of Self-organization and Self-assembly” 2008. Complexity. Vol. 14, No. 2, 10-17. P. 10.


“... self-organization systems are thermodynamically open and invariably immersed in their environments. Consequently, the self-organizing order necessarily reflects both order from interacting components and order that preexists in local environments. In our view, the intimate dependence of self-organizing systems on their environment is too often overlooked.” Halley, Julianne & D. Winkler. “Consistent concepts of Self-organization and Self-assembly” 2008. Complexity. Vol. 14, No. 2, 10-17. P. 11.


“We argue that self-organization necessarily reflects an interplay between internal and external sources of order.” Halley, Julianne & D. Winkler. “Consistent concepts of Self-organization and Self-assembly” 2008. Complexity. Vol. 14, No. 2, 10-17. P. 11.


“It follows that because all self-organized systems are thermodynamically open and immersed in local environments, all self-organizing systems are constrained in some way by external templates.” Halley, Julianne & D. Winkler. “Consistent concepts of Self-organization and Self-assembly” 2008. Complexity. Vol. 14, No. 2, 10-17. P. 11.


“... self-organization is the ‘spontaneous emergence of nonequilibrium structural organization on a macroscopic level due to collective interactions between a larger number of simple (usually microscopic) objects.’” Coveney, P. & R. Highfield. 1996. Frontiers of Complexity. Faber and Faber. Quoted in Halley, Julianne & D. Winkler. “Consistent concepts of Self-organization and Self-assembly” 2008. Complexity. Vol. 14, No. 2, 10-17. P. 12.


“The primary ingredients of self-organization are (1) positive feedback, (2) negative feedback, and (3) interactions among multiple system parts.” Halley, Julianne & D. Winkler. “Consistent concepts of Self-organization and Self-assembly” 2008. Complexity. Vol. 14, No. 2, 10-17. P. 12.


“The primary features of self-organization produce at least three secondary features: (1) amplification of fluctuations, (2) bifurcation, and (3) multistability.” Halley, Julianne & D. Winkler. “Consistent concepts of Self-organization and Self-assembly” 2008. Complexity. Vol. 14, No. 2, 10-17. P. 12.


“Self-organization is a dissipative nonequilibrium order at macroscopic levels, because of collective, nonlinear interactions between multiple microscopic components. This order is induced by interplay between intrinsic and extrinsic factors, and decays upon removal of the energy source. In this context, microscopic and macroscopic are relative.” Halley, Julianne & D. Winkler. “Consistent concepts of Self-organization and Self-assembly” 2008. Complexity. Vol. 14, No. 2, 10-17. P. 12.


“They [Gerhart and Kirschner] describe self-assembly as an energy minimization process that generates a single well-defined structure, uniquely determined by the size, number of components, geometry, and strength of interactions among components.” Halley, Julianne & D. Winkler. “Consistent concepts of Self-organization and Self-assembly” 2008. Complexity. Vol. 14, No. 2, 10-17. P. 13. Reference is to Gerhart, J. & M. Kirschner. Cells, Embryos, and Evolution. 1997. Blackwell Science.


“Self-assembly in chemistry very often employs noncovalent interactions such as hydrogen bonds, ionic interactions, metal chelation, and other molecular interactions. Such interactions are often weaker than covalent bonds and are reversible, so that the final structure is in thermodynamic equilibrium with its components. Because of the generally reversible nature of the interactions between components, self-assembled systems have an inbuilt capability for error correction, which is typically not available to covalently bonded structures.” Halley, Julianne & D. Winkler. “Consistent concepts of Self-organization and Self-assembly” 2008. Complexity. Vol. 14, No. 2, 10-17. P. 13.


“Self-assembly is a nondissipative structural order on a macroscopic level, because of collective interactions between multiple (usually microscopic) components that do not change their character upon integration into the self-assembled structure. This process is spontaneous because the energy of unassembled components is higher than the self-assembled structure, which is in static equilibrium, persisting without the need for energy input.” Halley, Julianne & D. Winkler. “Consistent concepts of Self-organization and Self-assembly” 2008. Complexity. Vol. 14, No. 2, 10-17. P. 14.


“Because the apparent self-assembly of building materials is mediated by individuals, we suggest that qualitative stigmergy is best called agent-assisted self-assembly. This highlights similarities between true self-assembly and that of qualitative stigmergy while acknowledging the fundamental differences between these system[s] in terms of the force driving the self-assembly process. In genuine self-assembly processes, energy minimization drives the procedure, whereas in the context of qualitative stigmergy, it is the animal’s behavior and motivation that drives the assembly process.” Halley, Julianne & D. Winkler. “Consistent concepts of Self-organization and Self-assembly” 2008. Complexity. Vol. 14, No. 2, 10-17. P. 15.


“Aristotle in the introductory chapter of his Politics distinguished between oikonomia (‘the art of household management’) and chrematistics (‘the art of acquisition’). Arguing about the difference between use- and exchange-value associated to commodities, Aristotle further distinguished between two different kinds of chrematistics: one subordinated to use-value logic and thus the oikonomia (providing households with the necessary use-values which were not provided internally, in exchange for those they produced in excess) and another form, which Aristotle rightly saw as secondary from a logical and historical point of view, concerned the ‘art of money-making’–accumulation of exchange-values by means of commerce. According to him, it is at this point, once converted to an end in itself, that chrematistics becomes something ‘unnatural’ and alien to the ‘art of living well.’” Stahel, Andri. “Complexity, oikonomia and political economy.” 2006. Ecological Complexity. 3: 369-381. Pp. 369-70.


“Dynamical networks constitute a very wide class of complex and adaptive systems.” Gros, Claudius. 2008. Complex and Adaptive Dynamical Systems: A Primer. Springer. P. 1.


“Relevance is defined as a property of inputs to cognitive processes (whether external stimuli, which can be perceived and attended to, or internal representations, which can be stored, recalled, or used as premises in inference). An input is relevant to an individual when it connects with available contextual assumptions to yield positive cognitive effects:...” Wilson, Deirdre & D. Sperber. Meaning and Relevance. 2012. Cambridge University Press. P. 6.


“The issue is no longer representation versus reality, phony versus authentic, artificial versus natural. That was for nineteenth-century Romantics to worry about... But there is no going back to reality.... We have been consigned to a new plane of being engendered by mediating representation of fabulous quality and inescapable ubiquity, a place where everything is addressed to us, everything is for us, and nothing is beyond us anymore.” De Zengotita, Thomas. 2005. Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It. Bloomsbury. P. 11.


“Despite the variety of shapes and motions of animal groups it is possible that many of the different collective patterns are generated by small variations in the rules followed by individual group members. Several authors hae developed computer simulation models, that attempt to capture the collective behaviour of animal groups in terms of the interactions between group members. For example, Couzin et al. proposed a model in which individual animals follow three simple rules of thumb: (i) move away from very nearby neighbours; (ii) adopt the same direction as those that are close by and (iii) avoid becoming isolated. Each individual thus has three zones – repulsion, alignment and attraction – which increase in size, so that individuals are attracted to neighbours over a larger range than they align, but decrease in priority, so that an individual would always move away from neighbours in the repulstion zone.” Sumpter, D.J.T. 2006. “The Principles of Collective Animal Behaviour.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences. Vol. 361, No. 1465. Pp. 5-22. P. 8.


“Not all of the collective patterns produced by animal groups are more than the sum of their parts. Symmetrical structures, such as the domes built by wood ants or the craters built by M. barbarus ants, can result from the independent actions of the colony’s ants. For example, Chretien showed that when an individual M. barbarus ant leaves the nest hole with a sand pellet, she moves in a straight line away from the hole in a random direction. Once the ant is, on average, 4.8 cm from the hole she drops the pellet. The fact that the direction chosen by the ant is independent of the direction taken by the other ants in the colony produces a symmetrical crater. The height of this crater, which here can be considered the output of the colony, is proportional to the number of building ants. It is purely the sum of the parts that created it.

“The fact that the crater wall is equally high on all sides of the ants’ nest entrance is a consequence of a remarkable mathematical theorem that applies to all systems consisting of large numbers of independent individuals: the central limit theorem. The theorem states that if each of a large number of independent individuals contributes a small randomly distributed quantity to some total output, then that total output is distributed according to a Normal distribution.” Sumpter, D.J.T. 2006. “The Principles of Collective Animal Behaviour.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences. Vol. 361, No. 1465. Pp. 5-22. P. 11. Reference is to Chretien, L. 1996. “Organisation spatiele du materiel provenant de l’excavation du nid chez Messor barbarus et des cadavres d’ouvrieres chez Lasius niger.” In Center for nonlinear phenomena and complex systems, Ph.D. thesis. Universite Libre de Bruxelles.


“The central limit theorem is the most basic statement about and the cornerstone for understanding all collective phenomena. It proves that systems consisting of independent parts are ‘usually’ no more than a square root of the number of parts more or less than the sum of their parts. The Normal distribution is universal, in the sense that all systems consisting of independent parts are subject to it. It thus provides a null hypothesis against which all data taken from systems purporting to exhibit some kind of feedback or self-organization can be compared. Indeed, in this sense all self-organized systems can be explained in terms of the manner in which their output deviate from a Normal distribution.” Sumpter, D.J.T. 2006. “The Principles of Collective Animal Behaviour.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences. Vol. 361, No. 1465. Pp. 5-22. Pp. 11-12.


“Studying systems of collective animal behaviour should proceed on a case-by-case basis. For each particular system, we classify how individuals interact with each other and build behavioural algorithms based on these observations. The behavioural algorithms are then the basis for mathematical models. If a similar mathematical model has been previously applied to another system, this helps us understand the behavioural algorithm and thus the system, but the equivalence of mathematical models alone should not guide the way in which we study our chosen system. Through this approach, mathematical models become a tool for investigating natural systems and the fact that the same model is applicable to many different systems is a happy co-incidence rather than a proof of universal laws.” Sumpter, D.J.T. 2006. “The Principles of Collective Animal Behaviour.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences. Vol. 361, No. 1465. Pp. 5-22. P. 15.


“... it is essential to such an [pragmatic] approach that systems are classified in terms of their logical or mathematical similarities and differences. The approach I take now is to list some of the principles for the behavioural algorithms that produce collective animal behaviour. This approach builds on the idea of self-organization that many of an animal group’s activities can be described in terms of three principles: positive feedback, negative feedback and the amplification of random fluctuations. Here, I add to this list the principles of individual integrity; response thresholds; leadership; inhibition; redundancy; synchronization and selfishness.” Sumpter, D.J.T. 2006. “The Principles of Collective Animal Behaviour.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences. Vol. 361, No. 1465. Pp. 5-22. P. 15.


“Essentially, synchronization is an example of positive feedback in time rather than space.” Sumpter, D.J.T. 2006. “The Principles of Collective Animal Behaviour.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences. Vol. 361, No. 1465. Pp. 5-22. P. 17.


“This is, then, the Aristotelian problematic: On the one hand, any concept of life must be transcendent to life in order to account for its ephemeral nature and its propensity for change. On the other hand, any concept of life must be immanent to life in order to demonstrate the inseparability between principle and manifestation. So, while Aristotle-the-biologist observes a set of characteristics unique to what he calls life, Aristotle-the-metaphysician struggles to articulate a coherent concept to encompass all these heterogeneous characteristics of life.” Thacker, Eugene. 2010. After Life. University of Chicago Press. P. 11.


“But what Plotinus does is to place this concept of the Soul squarely between a principle of absolute transcendence (the One), and a manifestation of emanation (the world, as caused by the Soul). The Soul is not just a principle of animation or life, but a principle of mediation as well. It sits, nestled between the absolutism of the One and its pervasive spreading-out or emanation in the world. The Soul is, in a sense, Janus-faced, with one side ‘in repose’ and unchanging, turning towards a contemplation of the One, and another side that is actively in operation, emanating the world. In fact, given this bifurcation between the Soul-as-eternal and the Soul-as-temporal, we can suggest something further about Plotinus’ concept of the Soul: the Soul is precisely that which contains the duplicity, if not the contradictions, inherent in the concept of Life.” Thacker, Eugene. 2010. After Life. University of Chicago Press. P. 33.


“Let us call this life-beyond-life, or really, this Life-beyond-the-living, superlative life. It both persists in a continuum that cuts across all instances of the living, while at the same time existing apart from any particular instance of th living as its ground or condition. It is a delimited life, a life that is superlative because it is not finite and never ‘runs out.’ While it is Aristotle who first articulates the distinction between Life and the living, it is Plotinus who gives us a concept of Life that is characterized by a tension between the superlative perfection of the divine and the dynamic, processual generosity that is also identical with the divine. Superlative life is neither the principle of life in itself, nor the concrete instance of the living, but an ontological necessity positing a background excess (Life) from which manifestations of this excess are foregrounded (the living). Superlative life is, quite simply, an ontology of Life that is thought of in terms of time, temporality, and process.” Thacker, Eugene. 2010. After Life. University of Chicago Press. P. 34.


“The long tradition of meditation on the divine names is often split: those who make positive claims for the divine (the divine can be named but qualified in a way that places it transcendentally above all things), and those who make negative claims for the divine (the divine can only be named as not-this or not-that).” Thacker, Eugene. 2010. After Life. University of Chicago Press. P. 38.


“For the Pseudo-Dionysius, the problem is not simply in finding the adequate words or the most appropriate names for the divine; rather, the problem has to do with the horizon of thought itself. Let us take a modern viewpoint of this problematic, and suggest that, for the Pseudo-Dionysius, the problem of the ‘divine names’ is really a problem of the unthought, a problem of the blind spots of thinking.” Thacker, Eugene. 2010. After Life. University of Chicago Press. P. 39.


“In both cases–the relation between Life and the living and the relation between Life and Being–a condition of contradiction appears to be fundamental to the very thought of Life. The impasse here has to do with whether or not any attempt to resolve the contradiction sublimates Life into something else: Life as indistinguishable from divine, sovereign Creation (theology); Life as subordinate to Being (metaphysics); or Life as pure description and classification (biology). In each instance, Life dissipates into God, Being, or the living.” Thacker, Eugene. 2010. After Life. University of Chicago Press. P. 90.


“Aristotle must make a wager. This wager is the following: that there is a concept of life in which life is not reducible to the living.” Thacker, Eugene. 2010. After Life. University of Chicago Press. P. 100.


“This is the real challenge of any ontology of life, and Aristotle is arguably the first to formulate it: how to think a concept of life that is, on the one hand, irreducible to the living, and on the other hand, which does not immediately evoke the mystical or is compromised by the scientific? It is not difficult to see how this challenge structures much of the philosophical thinking that follows: vitalism vs. mechanism, organicism vs. materialism, nature-as-poem vs. nature-as-matheme.”

“But such a wager raises the problem of method–how should one go about thinking the concept of life, given that this challenge is also about thought itself? Aristotle’s solution is to adopt different methods–philosophical exegesis in the De Anima, and classification and description to works such as the Historica Animalium.” Thacker, Eugene. 2010. After Life. University of Chicago Press. P. 101.


“Whatever their methods, Scholastic thought takes up the wager and the challenge offered by Aristotle: the wager that there is a distinction between Life and the living, and the challenge of how to think a concept of life that is neither reducible to the living (let us say ‘biology’) nor identical to mysticism and the ineffable (let us say ‘theology’). In modern terms, the concept of life as a philosophical concept becomes, in Scholastic thought, poised between biology and theology...” Thacker, Eugene. 2010. After Life. University of Chicago Press. P. 102.


“Generally, the idea that the supernatural and the natural, or God and Nature, are one and the same, tends to flatten and disperse any conceptual framework of transcendence or centralization. In its radical variant, pantheism even does away with the conciliatory, decentralized position of emanence or emanation. Such an idea brings with it obvious politico-theological dangers–any pantheist outlook essentially does away with all of Aquinas’ five proofs for the existence of God, and by extension, the necessity of the power relationships internal to religious governance.” Thacker, Eugene. 2010. After Life. University of Chicago Press. P. 228.


“But, as Deleuze notes, pantheism also brings with it another type of danger, one of a philosophical type. For in doing away with the stratifications of the supernatural and natural, pantheism also does away with the stratifications between human, animal, and divine. In modern parlance, pantheism raises the question of life as a fundamentally unhuman phenomenon. Pantheism in Deleuze’s sense points to a horizon in which both ‘life’ and ‘thought’ can be understood in non-anthropomorphic ways. It is not that each individual person is divine; rather, the divine is understood to be indissociable from nature, and because of this, radically unhuman, anonymous, and neutral.” Thacker, Eugene. 2010. After Life. University of Chicago Press. P. 228.


“If pantheism does involve the thought of pure immanence, then this thought will be equally misanthropic as well as simply non-anthropomorphic. For this reason, the pantheism which we’ve been referring to as heretical might better be called dark pantheism.” Thacker, Eugene. 2010. After Life. University of Chicago Press. P. 229.


“In a sense, the very history of Western philosophy is this ongoing dilemma concerning the very possibility of ‘living thought.’ The human seems to be the very ground of the intelligibility of life, insofar as life presupposes a temporal, formal, and spiritual dimension. Without a human subject to think the concept of life, can life be said to exist at all? This question is exhaustively formalized by Kant, but it is already apparent in Aristotle’s De Anima, where the question of nous (Intellect), as a privileged instance of psukhe, raises the question of the life that thinks itself. Is the life that thinks itself, itself living? Or, to borrow Aristotle’s categories, is Life the living reflecting on itself, as the living? In a sense, then, what is at stake in the thought of life is the life of thought itself.” Thacker, Eugene. 2010. After Life. University of Chicago Press. P. 242.


“Kant’s challenge is therefore how order in nature itself can be determined, without resorting to either theology–which relies upon an order transcendentally granted from outside–or to mechanism–which relies on a posited order that disavows any teleology.” Thacker, Eugene. 2010. After Life. University of Chicago Press. P. 243.


“Beyond this, there is another dilemma, one of the recurring conceptual motifs in Kant’s critical philosophy–how can any claim about finality in nature be made, when such a claim must in fact be made (that is, by a human subject vis-a-vis a world, however that world is conceptualized)? If one forgoes this possibility, then all of nature becomes subsumed within the human viewpoint, which results in effectively dissolving the concept of nature altogether. Given this, one has to entertain the notion that the very idea of nature is always an idea of a nature for us. One would then have to consider not just this or that particular purpose or goal of nature, but a ‘purposiveness’ of nature in general:

‘Thus if there is to be a concept or a rule which arises originally from the power of judgment, it would have to be a concept of things in nature insofar as nature conforms to our power of judgment, and thus a concept of a property of nature such that one cannot form any concept of it except that its arrangement conforms to our faculty for subsuming the particular given laws under more general ones even though these are not given; in other words, it would have to be the concept of a purposiveness of nature in behalf of our faculty for cognizing it.’

“Even if one allows that claims about the finality of nature cannot be dissociated from the usefulness of nature for us, there still remains the more basic problem of the conditions for which any such claim is possible at all. For such conditions, one would have to minimally presuppose some sort of reliable correlation between our cognitive framework for interacting with the world, and what amounts to a necessary, but aporetic, notion of the world in itself. The condition, for Kant, is that we must presume some sort of adequate fit between the world and our ability to make judgments about the world.” Thacker, Eugene. 2010. After Life. University of Chicago Press. P. 244. Subquote is from Kant, I. 2000. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Cambridge University Press. Edited by Guyer, Paul. Translated by Guyer, P. and E. Matthews. II, P. 8.


“But then natural science is confronted with an antinomy, which is really an antinomy of Life: either the emergence of life forms is explainable solely in terms of mechanical laws, or else there is something that governs the emergence of life forms that is not manifest in the entities and relations that those mechanical laws determine. The challenge then becomes how to think a concept of life, as ‘internally caused’ and as ‘reciprocally cause and effect,’ that is at the same time not reducible to its components and relations. As Kant notes, somewhat enigmatically, ‘[T]he end of the existence of nature itself must be sought beyond nature.’” Thacker, Eugene. 2010. After Life. University of Chicago Press. P. 248.


“While the shape and contour of philosophical thinking changes drastically after Aristotle and Scholasticism, the triad of life-as-time, life-as-form, and life-as-spirit is remarkable in its persistence.” Thacker, Eugene. 2010. After Life. University of Chicago Press. P. 249.


“But it is precisely the dilemma of Life that it is intelligible only to the extent that it is manifested in the living, all the while remaining inaccessible ‘in itself.’” Thacker, Eugene. 2010. After Life. University of Chicago Press. P. 256.


“Life is at once an object of thought, an object of study, even, of the living ‘out there,’ and at the same time precisely that which is lived ‘in here,’ within a conceptual framework of intuition and immediacy.” Thacker, Eugene. 2010. After Life. University of Chicago Press. P. 257.


“In this way, Kantian purposiveness recapitulates Aristotelian entelechy. Both grapple with the idea that there is some sort of innate orderliness or organization in life that serves as the fundamental guarantor that the question of Life is different from either the question of Being, or the question of God. And both Aristotle and Kant also grapple with whether this orderliness that is innate to life, this vital order, can be said to be fully internal to life itself, or whether it must have some sort of external source.” Thacker, Eugene. 2010. After Life. University of Chicago Press. P. 258.


“We sleep, allowing gravity to hold us, allowing Earth–our larger Body–to recalibrate our neurons, composting the keen encounters of our waking hours, stirring them back, as dreams, into the sleeping substance of our muscles. We give ourselves over to the influence of the breathing earth. Sleep, we might say, is a habit born in our bodies as the earth comes between our bodies and the sun. Sleep is the shadow of the earth as it falls across our awareness. Yes. To the human animal, sleep is the shadow of the earth as it seeps into our skin and spreads throughout our limbs, dissolving our individual will into the thousand and one selves that compose it–cells, tissues, and organs taking their prime directives now, from gravity and the wind–as residual bits of sunlight, caught in the long tangle of nerves, wander the drifting landscape of our earth-borne bodies like deer moving across the forested valleys.” Abram, David. 2010. Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology. Pantheon Books. P. 24.


“We say that the rock ‘is’ here, that the mountains ‘are’ over there; we use this little verb ‘to be’ countless times every day, and yet we forget that it is a verb, that it names an act–that simply to exist is a very active thing to be doing. By suppressing this activity, by taking ‘being’ entirely for granted, as a purely passive state, we flatten the wild contingency of existence, the uncertainty and risk of the present moment. We lock in the closet our vague puzzlement at finding ourselves here, in this very place, at this very moment of the world’s unfolding.

“‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ is the question that philosophers have used to unsettle our complacency regarding the weirdness of existence, to stir us from our forgetfulness, to reawaken our sense of wonder. Yet it is enough to notice the inherent dynamism of the present moment–to notice that mere ‘existence’ is already an upsurge, and not a blank and passive floating–in order to retrieve the sensuous world from the oblivion to which our concepts too often consign it.” Abram, David. 2010. Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology. Pantheon Books. P. 49.


“The name ‘deer’ (in its original spelling, ‘deor’) was once the Old English word for ‘animal’ in general (as the term ‘wilderness,’ or wild-deor-ness,’ once meant simply ‘the place of wild animals’). My dawning suspicion that certain ideas were like deer, visiting our awareness in much the same way that wild deer make contact with us–graceful, shy, lingering at the edge of our awareness, yet slipping back into the forest if too willfully focused upon–suggested that other ideas intersect our awareness more in the way of other animals. Some of them slither mostly unseen through the grass, sporting different hues and patterns in keeping with their favored haunts; others bask on warm rocks in the midafternoon, only to skitter away at our incautious approach. Certain lightweight thoughts flutter in the air around us, so small and erratic we easily neglect to notice them, while other more muscled notions lope unexpected across our roads, marking their passage with scent or scat. Dusky intuitions hunch on the middle branches, their eyes closed, listening intently for the soft rustlings of those other, tinier hints upon which they feed. Some of the most versatile ideas are entirely multiple, embodied by a thousand humming lives lofting and veering in concert; others are solitary powers, reticent and sly, able to keep their own counsel. There are insights we come upon only at the edge of the sea, and others we glimpse only in the craggy heights. Some prickly notions are endemic to deserts, while other thoughts, too slippery to grasp, are met mostly in swamps. Many nomad thoughts migrate between different realms, shifting their habits to fit the terrain, orienting themselves by the wind and the stars.” Abram, David. 2010. Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology. Pantheon Books. P. 118.


“The activity that we commonly call ‘prayer’ springs from just such a gesture, from the practice of directly addressing the animate surroundings. Prayer, in its most ancient and elemental sense, consists simply in speaking to things–to a maple grove, to a flock of crows, to the rising wind–rather than merely about things. As such, prayer is an everyday practice common to oral, indigenous peoples the world over. In the alphabetized West, however, we’ve shifted the other toward whom we direct such mindful speech away from the diverse beings that surround us to a single, all-powerful agency assumed to exist entirely beyond the evident world. Still, the quality of respectful attention that such address entails–the steady suspension of discursive thought and the imaginative participation with one’s chosen interlocutor–is much the same. It is a practice that keeps one from straying too far from oneself in one’s open honesty and integrity, a way of holding oneself in right relation to the other, whether that other is a God outside the world or the many-voiced world itself.” Abram, David. 2010. Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology. Pantheon Books. P. 170.


“If in an earlier era we spoke of the earthly world as fallen, sinful, and demonic, we now speak of it as mostly inert, mechanical, and determinate. In both instances nature is stripped of its generosity and prodigious creativity.” Abram, David. 2010. Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology. Pantheon Books. P. 302.


“Whether sustained by a desire for spiritual transcendence or by the contrary wish for technological control and mastery, most of our contemporary convictions carefully shirk and shy away from the way the biosphere is directly experienced from our creaturely position in the thick of its unfolding. They deflect our attention away from a mystery that gleams and glints in the depths of the sensuous world itself, shining forth from within each presence that we see or hear or touch. They divert us from a felt sense that this wild-flowering earth is the primary source of itself, the very well-spring of its own ongoing regenesis. From a recognition that nature, as the word itself suggests, is self-born. And hence that matter is not just created but also creative, not a passive blend of chance happenings and mechanically determined events, but an unfolding creativity ever coming into being, ever bringing itself forth....” Abram, David. 2010. Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology. Pantheon Books. Pp. 302-3.


“Do natural processes contain as much agency as cultural processes? An amoeba as much as a human? A cloud system as much as a state? No. But it does encourage us to rethink the dicey problematic of agency, to convert a dichotomous view that bestows agency upon humans only – or in many cases upon humans to some degree and God to an infinite degree – into a more distributive image of agency.” Connolly, William. 2011. A World of Becoming. Duke University Press. Pp. 21-2.


“My judgment is that no fully adequate conception of human agency is available today. Each theory comes replete with problems and mysteries that render it contestable. But a shift from the tri-archy – nature without agency, humanity with imperfect agency, God with perfect agency – to a heterogeneous world composed of interacting spatio-temporal systems with different degrees of agency carries considerable promise.” Connolly, William. 2011. A World of Becoming. Duke University Press. P. 22.


“With the emergence of complexity theory, however, these injunctions against proceeding from the human estate to consideration of degrees of agency in other domains lose some power. Now it becomes plausible to construe human agency as an emergent phenomenon, with some nonhuman processes possessing attributes bearing family resemblances to human agency and with human agency understood by references to its emergence from non-human processes of proto-agency. For if human agency is an emergent phenomenon rather than an eternal trait, precursors with different degrees of complexity are likely to be found. And other modes of agency that escape the designation of ‘precursor’ are too. If that is the case, the door is open to explore whether force-fields, implicated or not in the evolution of the human species, express this or that degree of agency.” Connolly, William. 2011. A World of Becoming. Duke University Press. P. 23.


“For the nonhuman world itself, these three contend, is not reducible to a world of objects. It is composed of multiple systems marked by differeing degrees of agency: each mode enters into complex conjunctions with others, and a temporary equilibrium (for seconds or centuries) involves interstabilization among several open systems with differing degrees of agency.” Connolly, William. 2011. A World of Becoming. Duke University Press. P. 30.


“By immanence I mean a philosophy of becoming in which the universe is not dependent on a higher power. It is reducible neither to mechanistic materialism, dualism, theo-teleology, nor the absent God of minimal theology. It concurs with the last three philosophies that there is more to reality than actuality.” Connolly, William. 2011. A World of Becoming. Duke University Press. P. 43.


“We humans can be guilty of many things, but we bear no debts or primordial guilt for being itself, even if there are features of the human predicament that tempt many to act as if we do. Rather, there are uncertain exchanges between stabilized formations and mobile forces that subsist within and below them, as well as between one open system and other human and nonhuman systems that intersect with it. Biological evolution, the evolution of the universe, radical changes in politics, and the significant conversion experiences of individuals attest to the periodic amplification of such circuits of exchange.” Connolly, William. 2011. A World of Becoming. Duke University Press. Pp. 43-4.


“Immanent realism is defined by contrast to mechanistic materialism, too. Some causal relations are not susceptible to either efficient or mechanical modes of analysis. There are efficient causes, as when, to take a classic example, one billiard ball moves another in a specific direction. But emergent causality – the dicey process by which new entities and processes periodically surge into being – is irreducible to efficient causality. It is a mode in which new forces can trigger novel patterns of self-organization in a thing, species, system, or being, sometimes allowing something new to emerge from the swirl back and forth between them: a new species, state of the universe, weather system, ecological balance, or political formation.” Connolly, William. 2011. A World of Becoming. Duke University Press. P. 44.


“During the Origin and Early Evolution of Life (OEEL) some of the parameters essential for understanding life may have been part of a phenomenological continuum, starting with lifeless chemical systems and ending with living biomolecular networks. Alleging this as true means that no sharp threshold can be assigned to the non-life to life transition.... I will refer to this as: ‘the dilemma of endless gradualism’.... Many lifeless systems show a few properties that are frequently used to diagnose life (including: growth, preservation of information, feedback regulation, controlled handedness and use of energy dissipation to maintain organization), yet their composition is dissimilar from that of biological life forms.” Popa, Radu. 2010. “Necessity, Futility and the Possibility of Defining Life are all Embedded in its Origin as a Punctuated-gradualism.” Origin of Life and Evolution of Biospheres. 40:183-190. Pp. 183-4.


“Stances about how life should be interpreted cover two broad philosophical dimensions:

• “Holism (or generalism), in opposition to reductionism (or minimalism); and
• “Dialectical-materialism, in opposition to vitalism.” Popa, Radu. 2010. “Necessity, Futility and the Possibility of Defining Life are all Embedded in its Origin as a Punctuated-gradualism.” Origin of Life and Evolution of Biospheres. 40:183-190. P. 185.


“As a discipline xenobiology establishes goals and means at the intersection between Biology, Artificial life and Astrobiology. Xenobiology posits that some non-biological systems and some system manifestations that show some life-related properties (fire, growing crystals, fluid vortices, viruses, computer games, socio-economical system, art and religion), are essential for understanding life and its origin.” Popa, Radu. 2010. “Necessity, Futility and the Possibility of Defining Life are all Embedded in its Origin as a Punctuated-gradualism.” Origin of Life and Evolution of Biospheres. 40:183-190. P. 187.


“Yet, only some of the features that evolved during the OEEL were gradual changes. Others were remarkable phase transitions. This view interprets the OEEL as an example of ‘punctuated gradualism’ and aims to put the ‘dilemma of endless gradualism’ to rest.” Popa, Radu. 2010. “Necessity, Futility and the Possibility of Defining Life are all Embedded in its Origin as a Punctuated-gradualism.” Origin of Life and Evolution of Biospheres. 40:183-190. P. 188.


“... the theory of agent causality is inconsistent with the thesis of universal causal determinism which assumes that every event has a set of sufficient conditions.

“Taylor ends his discussion of determinism by conceding that though he believes more strongly in the thesis that sometimes what he does is up to him, than he does in the thesis of universal determinism, ‘one can hardly affirm such a theory of agency with complete comfort and wholly without embarrassment, for the conception of men and their powers which is involved in it is strange indeed, if not positively mysterious ... and the conception of a thing’s being ‘within one’s power’ or ‘up to him’ seems to defy analysis or definition altogether, if taken in a sense which the theory of agency appears to require.’” Vollmer, Fred. 1999. Agent Causality. Kluwer Academic Publishers. Pp. 27-8. Subquotes are from Taylor, Richard. 1963. Metaphysics. Prentice-Hall.


“Where there is no law, there is no prediction, and no explanation. But laws only exist between events, not between substances (like agents) and events. So saying that an agent was the cause of some action of his, does not explain anything. Therefore the relation between an agent and his act is not a causal one.

“Davidson (and Thalberg) are right, I think, in claiming that there are no laws between agents and acts.” Vollmer, Fred. 1999. Agent Causality. Kluwer Academic Publishers. P. 39. References are to Davidson, D. 1980. Essays on actions and events. Clarendon Press. Thalberg, I. 1976. “How does agent causality work?” From Brand, M. & D. Walton (Eds.) Action Theory. Reidel.


“Now, notice again that the function of the heart is to pump blood, not to make thumping sounds. So we reach an important insight: the function of a part of an organism is typically a subset of its causal features.” Kauffman, Stuart. 2008. Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion. Basic Books. P. 34.


“The issue about the inadequacy of reductionism is not whether, given a heart, all its properties can be reduced to chemistry and physics without new, spooky physical properties. Presumably such a reduction can and eventually will be carried out. Rather it is threefold: How did the heart come into existence in the universe in the first place? Second, there is no way the physicist can distinguish that the pumping of blood is the function of the heart. Third, things that have causal consequences in their own right are real. Hearts, by virtue of the organization of structure and processes that they have due to their evolution by natural selection, do have causal consequences as hearts. Hearts are thus real entities. So, too, are organisms and the biosphere. All are part of the furniture of the universe.” Kauffman, Stuart. 2008. Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion. Basic Books. P. 36.


“Experimental demonstration of collective autocatalysis by small proteins thus shows us that it is catalytic closure of a set of molecules that is the backbone of life.” Kauffman, Stuart. 2008. Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion. Basic Books. P. 57.


“In this sense, information is nothing but the constraints themselves. This interpretation has the merit that it unifies information, matter, and energy into one framework, for constraints are also boundary conditions. And physicists since Newton have thought of boundary conditions as partially causal with respect to the way the energy-laden physical system behaves.” Kauffman, Stuart. 2008. Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion. Basic Books. P. 97.


“... scores of experiments have demonstrated that subjects can be fooled into believing that they caused actions that were in fact caused by something else.” Morsella, Ezequiel, C. Berger & S. Krieger. 2011. “Cognitive and neural components of the phenomenology of agency.” Neurocase. 17(3), 209-230. P. 210.


“In ideomotor theory, the mere thoughts of actions produce impulses that, if not curbed or controlled by ‘acts of express fiat’ (i.e., exercise of veto), result in the performance of those imagined actions.” Morsella, Ezequiel, C. Berger & S. Krieger. 2011. “Cognitive and neural components of the phenomenology of agency.” Neurocase. 17(3), 209-230. P. 212. Subquote is from James, William. 1890. The Principles of Psychology. Dover.


“According to Supramodular Interaction Theory (SIT), representations competing for action selection must lead to strong perturbations because the primary function of consciousness is to integrate incompatible skeletomotor intentions. Thus, conscious conflicts are automatically triggered by incompatible skeletomotor plans, such as when one holds one’s breath while underwater, suppresses emotions, or inhibits a prepotent response in laboratory interference paradigms.” Morsella, Ezequiel, C. Berger & S. Krieger. 2011. “Cognitive and neural components of the phenomenology of agency.” Neurocase. 17(3), 209-230. P. 212.


“From this standpoint, in the nervous system there are three distinct kinds of integration or ‘binding’. Perceptual binding (or afference binding) is the binding of perceptual processes and representations. This occurs in intersensory binding, as in the McGurk effect, and in intrasensory, feature binding (e.g., the binding of shape to color). Another form of binding, linking perceptual processing to action/motor processing, is known as efference binding. This kind of stimulus-response binding is what allows one to learn to press a button when presented with a cue in a laboratory paradigm....”

“The third kind of binding, efference-efference binding, occurs when two streams of efference binding are trying to influence skeletomotor action at the same time. This occurs when one holds one’s breath or suppresses a prepotent response. In SIT, it is the instantiation of conflicting efference-efference binding that requires consciousness. Consciousness is the ‘crosstalk’ medium that allows such actional processes to influence action collectively. Absent consciousness, behavior can be influenced by only one of the efference streams, leading to un-integrated actions such as unconsciously inhaling while underwater or reflexively removing one’s hand from a hot object. According to SIT, one can breathe unconsciously, but consciousness is required to suppress breathing. Similarly, one can unconsciously emit a pain-withdrawal response, but one cannot over-ride such a response without consciousness.” Morsella, Ezequiel, C. Berger & S. Krieger. 2011. “Cognitive and neural components of the phenomenology of agency.” Neurocase. 17(3), 209-230. Pp. 212-3.


“Efference-efference binding is thus a basic process associated with a basic aspect of agency – the sense of something countering the will of the self.” Morsella, Ezequiel, C. Berger & S. Krieger. 2011. “Cognitive and neural components of the phenomenology of agency.” Neurocase. 17(3), 209-230. P. 215.


“In attempting to explain agency without invoking a ‘self’ or high-level conceptual processes, we are left with (a) basic consciousness and (b) representations competing for the control of action.” Morsella, Ezequiel, C. Berger & S. Krieger. 2011. “Cognitive and neural components of the phenomenology of agency.” Neurocase. 17(3), 209-230. P. 222.


“In the well-connected phase, typified by high edge density and short path lengths, interactions can occur between most system components.... Dense interactions among control variables tend to stabilize systems, but also lead to increased coupling thereby reducing robustness to external perturbations.... Selection in well-connected systems acts globally and can promote attractor stability: local perturbations, if advantageous, spread rapidly, generating uniformity. Consequently, state space exploration is reduced and systems converge towards the nearest basis of attraction.” Paperin, Greg, D. Green & S. Sadedin. 2011. “Dual-phase evolution in complex adaptive systems.” Journal of The Royal Society: Interface. 8: 609-629. P. 611.


“In the poorly connected (or disconnected) phase, edge density is low, path lengths are long and the network typically consists of several sub-networks.... Propagation of stimuli is thus locally constrained. Poorly connected systems typically exhibit strong local variation, but little large-scale variability. Their decoupled dynamics imply that large-scale responses to external stimuli can be described in terms of sub-systems and are thus easier to predict. In CAS, evolutionary competition in poorly connected systems is locally constrained, permitting the exploration of alternative adaptation strategies and directional selection towards novel niches.” Paperin, Greg, D. Green & S. Sadedin. 2011. “Dual-phase evolution in complex adaptive systems.” Journal of The Royal Society: Interface. 8: 609-629. P. 612.


“DPE (Dual-phase evolution) occurs when networks that dominate the dynamics of an evolving system repeatedly switch between well-connected and poorly connected phases.

“Here we argue that DPE is common to adaptive as well as to other complex systems that exhibit self-organization. The term DPE thus implies a general process of complex development, rather than evolution in a strict biological sense. DPE-driven self-organization may account for several properties widely observed in complex systems including sustained diversity, perpetual novelty, modularity and scale-free topologies.” Paperin, Greg, D. Green & S. Sadedin. 2011. “Dual-phase evolution in complex adaptive systems.” Journal of The Royal Society: Interface. 8: 609-629. P. 612.


“Large-scale habitat fragmentation thus influences evolutionary novelty and diversity in several ways. Long-term isolated habitat patches are vulnerable to extinction, but facilitate genetic divergence through drift, local selection and sexual selection. Newly connected habitats allow invasions by species, which may then diversify through ecological speciation (but also drive the existing species to extinction). Habitats that are connected over long periods permit the global spread of adaptations and well-adapted species, but eliminate less-competitive forms. Thus each connectivity phase, and the transition between the phases, provides fundamentally different evolutionary conditions.” Paperin, Greg, D. Green & S. Sadedin. 2011. “Dual-phase evolution in complex adaptive systems.” Journal of The Royal Society: Interface. 8: 609-629. P. 616.


“Analysis of similar generative models may explain the appearance of scale-free properties in natural networks of (approximately) constant sizes. For example, preferential attachment is often used by individuals as a heuristic for optimizing social networks. In a growing group, this mechanism can generate scale-free topology; however, most societies have approximately constant size. Owing to selection pressure, individuals attempt to forge connections to popular individuals and to break connections with less popular group members. This corresponds to the above abstract model: well-connected entities tend to break edges to poorly connected neighbours while poorly connected entities seek to create edges to well-connected ones.” Paperin, Greg, D. Green & S. Sadedin. 2011. “Dual-phase evolution in complex adaptive systems.” Journal of The Royal Society: Interface. 8: 609-629. P. 620.


“The AC (adaptive cycle) is closely related to the concept of ‘panarchies’–a metaphor that describes the hierarchical relationships in dynamical systems of different scales. The AC is a metaphoric concept suggesting that the behaviour of many socio-ecological systems exhibits cycles consisting of four qualitative phases.

“– A growth and exploitation phase (designated r), in which new or freed-up areas and niches are rapidly populated by opportunistic organisms.
“– A conservation phase (K) signified by competition, selection and resource accumulation.
“– A collapse or release phase (Ω), in which accumulated resources are catastrophically released, often mediated by disturbances.
“– A reorganization phase (α) in which the remains of an Ω-collapse are reorganized and restructured.” Paperin, Greg, D. Green & S. Sadedin. 2011. “Dual-phase evolution in complex adaptive systems.” Journal of The Royal Society: Interface. 8: 609-629. P. 622.


“Recurrent phase changes in network connectivity play a key role in emergence and self-organization within many kinds of systems. Our review reveals several mechanisms that can produce these connectivity phase transitions, including external disturbances, slow forcing resulting in the crossing of attractor basin boundaries and internal feedbacks. Moreover, the two connectivity phases often display the features that characterize DPE. That is, a low-connectivity phase where isolated components evolve independently, and a high-connectivity phase where these components may interact and recombine, so that the system as a whole evolves in synchrony. As a result, systems can become more complex, modular, creative and better-adapted, when subject to DPE.” Paperin, Greg, D. Green & S. Sadedin. 2011. “Dual-phase evolution in complex adaptive systems.” Journal of The Royal Society: Interface. 8: 609-629. P. 623.


“Analysis of the ecosystem concept among specialists does not contradict the common usage but does continue to question many underlying assumptions. The specialist literature is rich with debate surrounding the topics of feedbacks and stability, biodiversity and stability, holism vs reductionism, and the importance of considering scale when studying ecological processes and interactions that regulate plant and animal populations.” Currie, William. 2011. “Units of nature or processes across scales? The ecosystem concept at age 75.” New Phytologist. 190: 21-34. P. 22.


“Key ecosystem processes include primary production, evapotranspiration, respiration, decomposition, secondary production, soil formation and cation exchange, nutrient mineralization and immobilization, and many others. The primary focus of study among ecosystem scientists today is these processes and the causes and effects of their dynamics, not the study of ecosystems as entities.” Currie, William. 2011. “Units of nature or processes across scales? The ecosystem concept at age 75.” New Phytologist. 190: 21-34. P. 24.


“With the rise of landscape ecology as a distinct field, investigators now consider phenomena directly related to landscape position, spatial heterogeneity, and patch geometries and adjacencies to be landscape processes, allowing a key conceptual separation that has advanced our ability to confront issues of scale. Rather than viewing an ecosystem as an entity at a finer scale than a landscape, we can view ecosystem processes and landscape processes as strongly interacting sets of distinct phenomena that can each occur across a range of scales.” Currie, William. 2011. “Units of nature or processes across scales? The ecosystem concept at age 75.” New Phytologist. 190: 21-34. P. 25.


“Investigators can all agree that an ecosystem is a quasi-organized type of system...” Currie, William. 2011. “Units of nature or processes across scales? The ecosystem concept at age 75.” New Phytologist. 190: 21-34. P. 27.


“Vitousek et al. described how human activities fix more nitrogen than all of nature and appropriate more than half of the world’s freshwater.” Currie, William. 2011. “Units of nature or processes across scales? The ecosystem concept at age 75.” New Phytologist. 190: 21-34. P. 28. Reference is to Vitousek PM, Mooney HA, Lubchenco J. & J. Melillo. 1997. “Human domination of earth’s ecosystems.” Science. 277: 494-499.


“In both its common usage and its usage among specialists, the ecosystem concept addresses the persistence of organization through time.” Currie, William. 2011. “Units of nature or processes across scales? The ecosystem concept at age 75.” New Phytologist. 190: 21-34. P. 29.


“Services valuation provides a means to estimate the utility of various projects, resource extraction scenarios, or land conservation scenarios. If ecosystem services address human well-being then they can be used, virtually by definition, to estimate utility. In coming decades, if ecologists do not engage in providing an improved scientific underpinning for ecosystem services, then economists, managers, and policy makers will estimate these using their own approaches. The resulting decisions may fail to appreciate long time horizons, spatial interconnections in the landscape, the roles of biodiversity, cumulative effects of multiple impacts, or lag times between causes and effects.” Currie, William. 2011. “Units of nature or processes across scales? The ecosystem concept at age 75.” New Phytologist. 190: 21-34. Pp. 29-30.


“Social-ecological systems should be viewed as the hierarchical level that integrates above ecosystems, particularly in human-dominated landscapes.” Currie, William. 2011. “Units of nature or processes across scales? The ecosystem concept at age 75.” New Phytologist. 190: 21-34. P. 30.


“At the heart of cognitive consistency theories is the gestaltian tenet that human cognition is substantially affected by mutual interaction among pieces of psychological knowledge–an interaction best understood within the framework of structural dynamics. Cognitive consistency theories were animated by four principles of structural dynamics. First, cognitive states are determined holistically rather than elementally....

“Second, structural properties are dynamic. The interrelatedness of the constitutive elements generates forces that determine the configuration of the structure....

“Third, the dynamic character of mental processes is such that they tend to settle at states of distinct structural properties, namely, Praegnanz, ‘good figure’, optimum order, consonance, or equilibrium....

“Fourth, and most pertinent to the current experimental project, these dynamic changes that occur at the structural level involve changes, or ‘reconstructions’ of the cognitive elements.” Simon, Dan, C. Snow & S. Read. “The Redux of Cognitive Consistency Theories: Evidence Judgments by Constraint Satisfaction.” 2004. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol. 86, No. 6, 814-837. P. 815.


“As a number of people have noted, states of coherence or equilibrium in a constraint satisfaction network are ‘attractors,’ so called because they effectively attract the state of the system to that point.” Simon, Dan, C. Snow & S. Read. “The Redux of Cognitive Consistency Theories: Evidence Judgments by Constraint Satisfaction.” 2004. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol. 86, No. 6, 814-837. Pp. 830-1.


“The study of complexity is, to a large extent, a search for the principles pervading self-organized, emergent phenomena and defining its potential phases.” Sole, Ricard. 2011. Phase Transitions. Princeton University Press. P. 2.


“Because there are many views in this vicinity, it is best that we define what we mean by ‘extended cognition.’ The literature makes a distinction between embodied, situated, and extended cognition in supposedly ascending order of radicalness. The first claim says roughly that mind exists in the entire body, and not just in the central nervous system. The second claim says that certain environmental or social background conditions are necessary for certain cognitive functions. And the third claim holds that brain-body-world are dynamically coupled and thus mental states and cognitive functions might be viewed as extending spatiotemporally beyond the skin of the organism. This last claim is the heart of extended cognition. Extended cognition, then, is the claim that at least in some cases, the environment serves as more than the mere background for and input to the cognitive system; it is a necessary part of the cognitive system.” Silberstein, Michael & A. Chemero. 2012 “Complexity and Extended Phenomenological-Cognitive Systems.” Topics in Cognitive Science. 4: 35-50. P. 37.


“The hard problem is the problem of accounting for subjectivity in a world of objects. Affordances, however, are not objects. Indeed, as Gibson notes, they point out the inadequacy of the dichotomy between subjectivity and objectivity. Without this hard and fast subjective-objective cut, accounting for the existence of subjectivity does not seem at all impossible. Indeed, 25 years of scientific research on affordances indicates that there is no barrier at all to scientific accounts of subjective-objective hybrids. This research provides a possible way forward in the science of cognition and consciousness, allowing a way to see between a Nothing But and a Something Else as Well.” Silberstein, Michael & A. Chemero. 2012 “Complexity and Extended Phenomenological-Cognitive Systems.” Topics in Cognitive Science. 4: 35-50. P. 47.


“... we extend and refine the framework to explicitly to take a system view of culture into account.

“Rather than being a theory of personality per se, CAPS theory (‘Cognitive-Affective Processing System’) is a general framework that outlines a set of principles. It proposes that human behavior is mediated by a set of cognitive-affective units (CAUs) organized within a stable network of activation. This network or organization, according to Mischel and Shoda, constitutes the basic stable structure of the personality processing system and underlies the behavioral expressions that characterize the individual.” Mendoza-Denton, Rodolfo & W. Mischel. 2007. “Integrating System Approaches to Culture and Personality: The Cultural Cognitive-Affective Processing System.” From Kitayama, Shinobu & D. Cohen; Editors. Handbook of Cultural Psychology. Guilford Press. Pp. 175-195. P. 180. Reference is to Mischel, W. & Y. Shoda. 1995. “Integrating dispositions and processing dynamics within a unified theory of personality: The cognitive-affective personality system.” From Pervin, L.A. & O. John (Eds). Handbook of personality: Theory and research (2nd edition). Pp. 197-218. Guilford Press.


“There seems to be wide agreement that culture plays a large role in determining what is valued, what is worth pursuing, and how to interpret the world.” Mendoza-Denton, Rodolfo & W. Mischel. 2007. “Integrating System Approaches to Culture and Personality: The Cultural Cognitive-Affective Processing System.” From Kitayama, Shinobu & D. Cohen; Editors. Handbook of Cultural Psychology. Guilford Press. Pp. 175-195. P. 181.


“A systems view of culture recognizes that cultural values and belief systems shape the institutions and everyday practices of a culture, which themselves provide cultural affordances or opportunities for the expression and reinforcement of these cultural values.” Mendoza-Denton, Rodolfo & W. Mischel. 2007. “Integrating System Approaches to Culture and Personality: The Cultural Cognitive-Affective Processing System.” From Kitayama, Shinobu & D. Cohen; Editors. Handbook of Cultural Psychology. Guilford Press. Pp. 175-195. P. 183.


“The Cultural Cognitive-Affective Processing System (C-CAPS) model is one in which a system view of culture and a system view of the person are integrated and explicitly acknowledged to influence each other.” Mendoza-Denton, Rodolfo & W. Mischel. 2007. “Integrating System Approaches to Culture and Personality: The Cultural Cognitive-Affective Processing System.” From Kitayama, Shinobu & D. Cohen; Editors. Handbook of Cultural Psychology. Guilford Press. Pp. 175-195. P. 183.


“Consequently, functions can be seen, in the first instance, as descriptive tools for the constitution and decomposition of dynamic systems.” Toepfer, Georg. 2011. “Teleology and its constitutive role for biology as the science of organized systems in nature.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. 43: 113-119. P. 118.


“A PoV (point of view) would be a very special sort of entity. PoV are not reducible to information, they are not psychological entities either, and they are not describable in a purely physicalistic language. Perhaps PoV are ontologically primitive entities.” Vazquez, Margarita & M. Liz. 2011. “Models as Points of View: The Case of System Dynamics.” Foundations of Science. 16:383-391. P. 386.


“A model is a PoV capable of provoking peculiar changes in other PoV, being those changes relevant for the possible actions linked to the second PoV. Vazquez, Margarita & M. Liz. 2011. “Models as Points of View: The Case of System Dynamics.” Foundations of Science. 16:383-391. P. 386.


“Scenario of Actions (SA) = Structure of possible actions, with different weights, linked to a PoV.” Vazquez, Margarita & M. Liz. 2011. “Models as Points of View: The Case of System Dynamics.” Foundations of Science. 16:383-391. P. 386.


“It is easy to appreciate that the case of SD (system dynamics) is paradigmatic in relation to the heterogeneous character of the notion of model. We can find in SD modelling a great variety of models: mental models, verbal models, iconic models, mathematical models, computer programs, simulations, virtual scenarios, etc. Moreover, the result of any modelling process never is a single model, but a family (or set of families) of different models.” Vazquez, Margarita & M. Liz. 2011. “Models as Points of View: The Case of System Dynamics.” Foundations of Science. 16:383-391. P. 389.


“We need, I argued, to think of scientific practice as an open-ended, reciprocally structured interplay of human and nonhuman agency, a dance of agency, in the process that I called mangling.” Pickering, Andrew. 2008. The Mangle in Practice: Science, Society, and Becoming. Duke University Press. P. vii.


“... there is something visibly and demonstrably wrong with the hegemonic mainstream interpretive frameworks in the humanities and social sciences, precisely in that they obscure the posthuman coupling between people and things and the omnipresence of temporal emergence and becoming.” Pickering, Andrew. 2008. The Mangle in Practice: Science, Society, and Becoming. Duke University Press. P. viii.


“As Heidegger put it, science is at best in the domain of the ‘correct’ rather than the ‘true.’” Pickering, Andrew. 2008. The Mangle in Practice: Science, Society, and Becoming. Duke University Press. P. 8.


“Beer’s basic starting point was explicitly ontological. He insisted that the world was what he called ‘an exceedingly complex system’–one that was impossible to know and control fully. “ Pickering, Andrew. 2008. The Mangle in Practice: Science, Society, and Becoming. Duke University Press. P. 12. Reference is to Beer, Stafford. 1959. Cybernetics and Management. English Universities Press. P. 12.


“Pickering defines the humanities as humanist ‘inasmuch as they study and theorise a world of humans amongst themselves.’ The sciences are ‘antihumanist’ precisely inasmuch as they study and theorize a material world from which humans are absent. Only in science and technology studies, he argues, has an attempt been made to close the gap, but this simply produces new tensions: ‘So, ‘bridging the gap’ between the two cultures creates a different gap. Now the mainstream scientists and humanists appear as a monolithic bloc, united in their dualism, against which Science and Technology studies ... appears as a strangely nondualist formation, or, as I am inclined to say a posthumanist one–where the word ‘poshumanist’ denotes a decentred perspective in which humanity and the material world appear as symmetrically intertwined, with neither constituting a controlling centre.’” Franklin, Adrian. “A Choreography of Fire: A Posthumanist Account of Australians and Eucalypts.” 2008. Pp. 17-45. P. 19. From Pickering, Andrew. The Mangle in Practice: Science, Society, and Becoming. Duke University Press. Subquote is from Pickering, Andrew. 2000. “In the thick of things and the politics of becoming.” Paper presented at Entering the Third Millennium: Philosophy between Its Past and Future. Bergen, Norway, May 18-21. P. 3.


“However, the posthumanist ontology is also concerned with the nature of conscious agency and the limits of control that it can attain. Posthumanists dispute the very possibility of the humanist project as an ordering of the world, and they argue that ‘the very illusion of control speaks a fundamental ignorance about the nature of emergent processes through which consciousness, the organism and the environment are constituted’. As Jeff Malpas and Gary Wickham argue, failure and instability are built into human ordering attempts just as much as success and stability. This is because ordering attempts that push into the world are always incomplete and are frequently the subject of other orderings that may not be compatible.” Franklin, Adrian. “A Choreography of Fire: A Posthumanist Account of Australians and Eucalypts.” 2008. Pp. 17-45. P. 22. From Pickering, Andrew. The Mangle in Practice: Science, Society, and Becoming. Duke University Press. Subquote is from Hayles, Katherine. 1999. How We Became Posthuman. University of Chicago Press. P. 288. Reference is to Malpas, Jeff & G. Wickham. 1995. “Governance and failure: On the limits of sociology.” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology. 31(3):37-50.


“[In speaking of the “deceit of humanism”] ‘Mastery through the exercise of autonomous will is merely the story,’ Hayles argues, ‘consciousness tells itself to explain results that actually come about through chaotic dynamics and emergent structures. If...there is a relation among the desire for mastery, an objectivist account of science, and the imperialist project of subduing nature, then the posthuman offers resources for the construction of another account.’ In this account emergence replaces teleology: reflexive epistemology replaces objectivism; distributed cognition replaces autonomous will; embodiment replaces a body seen as a support system for the mind; and dynamic partnership between humans and intelligent machines replaces the liberal humanist subject’s manifest destiny to dominate and control nature.” Franklin, Adrian. “A Choreography of Fire: A Posthumanist Account of Australians and Eucalypts.” 2008. Pp. 17-45. P. 23. From Pickering, Andrew. The Mangle in Practice: Science, Society, and Becoming. Duke University Press. Subquote is from Hayles, Katherine. 1999. How We Became Posthuman. University of Chicago Press. P. 288.


“More recently the constitution of agency has been enlarged by Actor-Network Theory (ANT) writers, a new group of geographers lead by Nigel Thrift and David Harvey and feminists such as Haraway.” Franklin, Adrian. “A Choreography of Fire: A Posthumanist Account of Australians and Eucalypts.” 2008. Pp. 17-45. P. 28. From Pickering, Andrew. The Mangle in Practice: Science, Society, and Becoming. Duke University Press.


“... ‘reduction’ has to be distinguished from ‘reductionism.’ For Bunge, Lewontin, Levins, and others, while reduction is a common epistemic operation, which is an integral part of each and every scientific endeavor, reductionism, understood as a research strategy, amounts to ‘the methodological principle according to which (micro)reduction is in all cases necessary and sufficient to account for wholes and their properties.’ Or, in Lewontin and Levins’ words, reductionism is committed to the view that

‘... more complex phenomena are ... the consequence of determination by processes at ‘lower’ levels; ... Clearly, reductionism takes parts to be ontologically prior to wholes and would generally reject an emergentist view of the properties of the wholes.’”
Wan, Poe Yu-ze. 2011. “Emergence a la Systems Theory: Epistemological Totalausschluss or Ontological Novelty?” Philosophy of the Social Sciences. 41:178-210. P. 189. Subquote is from Lewontin, Richard and Richard Levins. 2007. Biology under the influence: Dialectical essays on ecology, agriculture, and health. Monthly Review Press. P. 135.


“According to Wimsatt, four conditions have to be met for a given systemic property to be aggregative, and hence nonemergent. In other words, a given systemic property is emergent if it violates one or more of the four conditions of aggregativity. These conditions are (1) inter-substitution: the parts of the system are intersubstitutable without affecting the systemic property; (2) size scaling: the systemic property remains similar when parts are removed or added; (3) decomposition and reaggregation: the systemic property remains invariant when the system is partitioned into parts and reaggregated; (4) linearity: there are no cooperative or inhibitory interactions among the parts of the system–that is to say, the relation between parts and whole remains linear.” Wan, Poe Yu-ze. 2011. “Emergence a la Systems Theory: Epistemological Totalausschluss or Ontological Novelty?” Philosophy of the Social Sciences. 41:178-210. P. 192. Reference is to Wimsatt, William. 2006. “Aggregate, composed, and evolved systems: Reductionistic heuristics as means to more holistic theories.” Biol Philos. 21:667-702. P. 676.


“What these conditions indicate is that to define a property of the system under investigation as emergent ‘is to say that it does depend upon the mode of organization of the parts.’ Therefore, aggregativity can be viewed as the opposite of emergence.” Wan, Poe Yu-ze. 2011. “Emergence a la Systems Theory: Epistemological Totalausschluss or Ontological Novelty?” Philosophy of the Social Sciences. 41:178-210. P. 192. Subquote is from Wimsatt, William. 2007. Appendix C: Glossary of key concepts and assumptions. Re-Engineering philosophy for limited beings: Piecewise approximations to reality. Harvard University Press. P. 353.


“The concepts of fact, appearance, and fiction constitute a family, since neither of them makes full sense in isolation from the other members of the triad.” Bunge, Mario. 2006. Chasing reality: Strife over realism. University of Toronto Press. P. xii.


“Over the past decade, theorists and researchers in the social sciences have come to recognize the relevance of the dynamical approach to their respective areas of concern. This recognition has fueled ambitious attempts to adapt the concepts and methods associated with nonlinear dynamical systems to various topics in social psychology, including attitudes, decision making, self-regulation, self-concept, action, social interaction, social influence, group dynamics, close relations, organizational behavior, and social systems.” Vallacher, Robin. 2007. “Dynamical Social Psychology: Finding Order in the Flow of Human Experience.” Pp. 734-758. From Kruglanski, Arie & T. Higgins (Eds.) Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Principles, 2nd Edition. P. 735.


“... a person can be viewed as a separate system capable of displaying rich dynamics. Social coordination, then, involves the synchronization of partners’ respective dynamics to produce a higher-order system with its own dynamic properties.” Vallacher, Robin. 2007. “Dynamical Social Psychology: Finding Order in the Flow of Human Experience.” Pp. 734-758. From Kruglanski, Arie & T. Higgins (Eds.) Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Principles, 2nd Edition. P. 736.



“The possibility of latent attractors has recently been explored in the context of social relations characterized by seemingly intractable conflict.... By the same token, though, seemingly fruitless efforts at conflict resolution may have the effect of creating a latent positive attractor for intergroup relations, thereby establishing a potential relationship to which the groups can switch if other conditions permit.” Vallacher, Robin. 2007. “Dynamical Social Psychology: Finding Order in the Flow of Human Experience.” Pp. 734-758. From Kruglanski, Arie & T. Higgins (Eds.) Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Principles, 2nd Edition. P. 739.


“Social psychological dynamics can be described in terms of not only seeking and maintaining specific states (i.e., fixed-point attractors) but also avoiding or escaping various states. In classic and contemporary psychological theories, avoidance tendencies are accorded equal theoretical status to approach tendencies....

“From a dynamical perspective, states in which a system cannot stabilize and from which the system escapes are termed ‘repellors.’” Vallacher, Robin. 2007. “Dynamical Social Psychology: Finding Order in the Flow of Human Experience.” Pp. 734-758. From Kruglanski, Arie & T. Higgins (Eds.) Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Principles, 2nd Edition. P. 739.


“The self-organizing nature of groups and societies has been verified in recent empirical research and computer simulations on social influence and interdependence.” Vallacher, Robin. 2007. “Dynamical Social Psychology: Finding Order in the Flow of Human Experience.” Pp. 734-758. From Kruglanski, Arie & T. Higgins (Eds.) Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Principles, 2nd Edition. P. 742.


“Such situational factors [“social norms, authority figures, the presence of others, social feedback, incentives and threats, social influence strategies, environmental conditions such as temperature and crowding, and a host of other general and localized factors”] are commonly operationalized as independent variables in experimental research and are assumed to provide the proximate causes of human thought, affect, and action.” Vallacher, Robin. 2007. “Dynamical Social Psychology: Finding Order in the Flow of Human Experience.” Pp. 734-758. From Kruglanski, Arie & T. Higgins (Eds.) Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Principles, 2nd Edition. P. 742.


“The dynamical perspective reframes the person-versus-situation issue somewhat. The basic idea is that external factors do not promote change directly but, rather, shape thought and behavior by influencing the person’s intrinsic dynamics.” Vallacher, Robin. 2007. “Dynamical Social Psychology: Finding Order in the Flow of Human Experience.” Pp. 734-758. From Kruglanski, Arie & T. Higgins (Eds.) Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Principles, 2nd Edition. P. 742.



“In addressing this issue, Nowak and colleagues conceptualized the self-structure as a complex system composed of cognitive elements representing self-relevant information, with mechanisms of self-organization promoting coherence and stability in self-concept in much the same way that such mechanisms promote social consensus among autonomous agents in society.” Vallacher, Robin. 2007. “Dynamical Social Psychology: Finding Order in the Flow of Human Experience.” Pp. 734-758. From Kruglanski, Arie & T. Higgins (Eds.) Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Principles, 2nd Edition. P. 748. Reference is to Nowak, A, Szamrej, J & B. Latane. 1990. “From private attitude to public opinion: A dynamic theory of social impact. Psychological Review. 97:362-376.


“These two group-level outcomes–polarization and clustering–are commonly observed in computer simulations and are reminiscent of well-documented social processes.” Vallacher, Robin. 2007. “Dynamical Social Psychology: Finding Order in the Flow of Human Experience.” Pp. 734-758. From Kruglanski, Arie & T. Higgins (Eds.) Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Principles, 2nd Edition. P. 751.


“At first blush, it is easy to reframe diverse social psychological processes in dynamical terms. Human experience qualifies as a complex system, in that any mental, affective, or behavioral process can be analyzed with respect to myriad genetic hormonal, dispositional, familial, situational, and cultural causes....

“The dynamical perspective, in fact, may prove too appealing for those seeking an integrative paradigm for social psychology. Such notions as self-organization, emergence, bifurcation, and chaos have an intuitive resemblance to many personal and interpersonal phenomena. It is tempting to note the penchant for spontaneous coordination of sentiments and actions in social groups, for example, or to suggest that attitudes emerge from the self-organization of specific thoughts. Although such intuitions are compelling, the success of the dynamical perspective will depend on the ability of this approach to go beyond metaphors, intuitive similarity, and general statements to generate explicit, theoretical statements and testable hypotheses.” Vallacher, Robin. 2007. “Dynamical Social Psychology: Finding Order in the Flow of Human Experience.” Pp. 734-758. From Kruglanski, Arie & T. Higgins (Eds.) Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Principles, 2nd Edition. P. 752.


“Personal causation can be understood as patterns of intrinsic dynamics and constraints on the effects of external influences.” Vallacher, Robin. 2007. “Dynamical Social Psychology: Finding Order in the Flow of Human Experience.” Pp. 734-758. From Kruglanski, Arie & T. Higgins (Eds.) Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Principles, 2nd Edition. P. 754.


“The term ‘emergence’ refers to the origin of novelties, as in the emergence of a plant out of a seed and the emergence of a visual pattern from the juxtaposition of the tiles in a mosaic. And the convergence discussed in this book is that between initially separate approaches and fields, as in the interdisciplinary studies of mental processes and of the creation and distribution of wealth.

“At first sight emergence and convergence appear alien to each other, if only because, whereas the former is an ontological category, the latter is an epistemological one. On second thought they are not mutually alien, because the understanding of emergence often requires the convergence of two or more lines of research.” Bunge, Mario. 2003. Emergence and Convergence: Qualitative Novelty and the Unity of Knowledge. University of Toronto Press. P. 3.


“ontological: emergence = occurrence of qualitative novelty
and

“epistemological: emergence = unpredictability from lower levels”
Bunge, Mario. 2003. Emergence and Convergence: Qualitative Novelty and the Unity of Knowledge. University of Toronto Press. P. 14.


“A system is an object with a bonding structure.” Bunge, Mario. 2003. Emergence and Convergence: Qualitative Novelty and the Unity of Knowledge. University of Toronto Press. P. 20.


“The following characterization, to be called the CESM model, is more comprehensive. It states that any system s may be modeled, at any given instant, as the quadruple

μ(s) = 〈C(s), E(s), S(s), M(s)〉,

where
C(s) = Composition: Collection of all the parts of s;
E(s) = Environment: Collection of items, other than those in s, that act on or are acted upon by some or all components of s;
s(s) = Structure; Collection of relations, in particular bonds, among components of s or among these and items in its environment E(s).
M(s) = Mechanism: Collection of processes in s that make it behave the way it does.” Bunge, Mario. 2003. Emergence and Convergence: Qualitative Novelty and the Unity of Knowledge. University of Toronto Press. P. 35.


“... we have sketched a world view and an approach that we have called sometimes systemism, and at other times emergentism, for its foci are the concepts of system and emergence. Systemism, or emergentism, is seen to subsume four general but one-sided approaches:
“1. Holism, which tackles systems as wholes and refuses both to analyse them and to explain the emergence and breakdown of totalities in terms of their components and the interactions among them; this approach is characteristic of the layperson and of philosophical intuitionism and irrationalism, as well as of Gestalt psychology and of much of that passes for ‘systems philosophy.’
“2. Individualism, which focuses on the composition of systems and refuses to admit any supra individual entities or properties thereof; this approach is often proposed as a reaction against the excesses of holism, particularly in the social studies and in moral philosophy.
“3. Environmentalism, which emphasizes external factors to the point that it overlooks the composition, internal structure, and mechanism of the system – the behaviourist view.
“4. Structuralism, which treats structures as if they preexisted things or even as if things were structures – a characteristically idealist view.

“Each of these four views holds a grain of truth. In putting them together, systemism (or emergentism) helps avoid four common fallacies.” Bunge, Mario. 2003. Emergence and Convergence: Qualitative Novelty and the Unity of Knowledge. University of Toronto Press. Pp. 38-9.


“This way of proceeding will be called the systemic approach, and its opposite the sectoral approach. I submit that the former is more efficient than the latter, because reality itself happens to be systemic rather than either an undifferentiated blob or a loose assemblage of separate items.” Bunge, Mario. 2003. Emergence and Convergence: Qualitative Novelty and the Unity of Knowledge. University of Toronto Press. P. 41.


“Historically, the first known example of a physical system was the solar system. It took no less than Newton to recognize it as such rather than as a mere assemblage of bodies, such as a constellation.” Bunge, Mario. 2003. Emergence and Convergence: Qualitative Novelty and the Unity of Knowledge. University of Toronto Press. P. 43.


“Solids, liquids, and physical fields, whether gravitational, electomagnetic, or other, provide further examples of wholes. A perturbation in a region of any such continuous medium propagates throughout the whole. Think of a stone dropping on a pond, or of an electron moving through an electric field. It is no coincidence that solids and liquids, unlike gases, are system of atoms or molecules held together by fields.” Bunge, Mario. 2003. Emergence and Convergence: Qualitative Novelty and the Unity of Knowledge. University of Toronto Press. P. 44.


“The concept of a system is central to mathematics and natural science. There are two reasons for this. One is that the real world is the system of all systems. The other reason is that all ideas, whether or not they refer to real things, come in bundles. An isolated idea would be unintelligible, hence no idea at all. It is therefore amazing that the very concept of a system is absent from most contemporary philosophies ....” Bunge, Mario. 2003. Emergence and Convergence: Qualitative Novelty and the Unity of Knowledge. University of Toronto Press. P. 52.


“Ordinary language offers one of the simplest and yet most sophisticated illustrations of the concepts of system....” Bunge, Mario. 2003. Emergence and Convergence: Qualitative Novelty and the Unity of Knowledge. University of Toronto Press. P. 53.


“Regrettably, the very idea of a system is absent from the standard philosophy of language. And yet a systemic approach to language has several advantages. One of them is that, when exhibiting a language as a system rather than a mere aggregate, one can account for contextuality, since the signification of a sign depends partly on its context. Another advantage of systemism is that it emphasizes the relations between linguistic items and extralinguistic ones, both cognitive and non-cognitive. A third advantage is that it encourages stressing rather than cutting the links between form, content (meanng), and use. A fourth is that it exhibits linguistics as a multidiscipline straddling the natural science / social science divide erected by idealism.” Bunge, Mario. 2003. Emergence and Convergence: Qualitative Novelty and the Unity of Knowledge. University of Toronto Press. P. 54.


“‘Natural signs,’ such as dark clouds, are such only by way of hypothesis. And ‘social signs,’ such as winks, are such only by virtue of social convention. That is, natural and social signs are not signs proper but rather perceptible indicators of imperceptible things, properties, or events. Hence they do not signify, and therefore talk of their ‘meaning’ is at best metaphorical, at worst plain wrong.” Bunge, Mario. 2003. Emergence and Convergence: Qualitative Novelty and the Unity of Knowledge. University of Toronto Press. P. 58.


“Contemporary materialism is a family with three main members: physicalism, or vulgar materialism; dialectical materialism, the Marxist philosophy; and emergentist (or modern) materialism.

“Physicalism (or vulgar materialism) is radically reductionist. Indeed, it states that everything is physical. Consequently it claims that, although there may be different levels of analysis or description, these have no counterparts in reality. Ancient Greek and Indian atomism, as well as the mechanistic world view that dominated natural science between about 1600 and 1900, have been the highlights of physicalism.

“Dialectical materialism, crafted by Engels, Lenin, and a number of Soviet philosophers, is a sort of synthesis of eighteenth-century materialism (mostly physicalist) and Hegel’s dialectics. It has therefore the merits of the former and the absurdities of the latter. The main false theses of dialectics are that every thing is a unity of opposites, and that all changes derive from such ‘contradictions’ or ‘struggles of opposites.’ The mere existence of elementary particles, such as electrons, and of cooperation on all levels – from self-assembly and cell clumping to social cooperation – falsifies these theses. These cases also indict dialectical materialism as an a priori philosophy eager to find examples but reluctant to admit counter -examples. However, dialectical materialism has the merit of emphasizing qualitative novelty, or emergence.

“Emergentist (or modern) materialism avoids the oversimplifications of physicalism and the obscurities and sophistries of dialectics. It asserts that, although every real existent is material; material things fall into at least five qualitatively different integrative levels: physical, chemical, biological, social, and technical. The things in every level are composed of lower-level things, and possess emergent properties that their constituents lack. For example, a brain subsystem capable of having mental experiences of some kind is composed of neurons, glial cells, and cells of other kinds, none of which is capable of minding; likewise, a business firm, though composed of persons, offers products that no individual could produce.” Bunge, Mario. 2003. Emergence and Convergence: Qualitative Novelty and the Unity of Knowledge. University of Toronto Press. Pp. 146-7.


“The failures of full micro-reduction may be explained by the hypothesis that every real thing, except for the universe as a whole, is embedded in some higher-level system or other.” Bunge, Mario. 2003. Emergence and Convergence: Qualitative Novelty and the Unity of Knowledge. University of Toronto Press. P. 148.


“Statistical mechanical analyses of non-linear systems have been immensely productive, but for all the fecundity of the models that have been put forth, none of these models has yet succeeded in offering an account of how inherently biological properties (like function, purpose and agency) might emerge from the interaction among simple elements of effectively homogeneous systems, however complex the dynamics of interaction might be. Rather, the appearance of such properties seems to require an order of complexity going beyond whatever might emerge spontaneously out of such systems – a form of complexity, based on specificity and heterogeneity, that a number of authors, starting with Warren Weaver, and now rearticulated by John Mattick and John Doyle, have referred to as ‘organised complexity.’” Keller, Evelyn Fox. 2007. “Contenders for life at the dawn of the twenty-first century: approaches from physics, biology and engineering.” Interdisciplinary Science Reviews. Vol 32, No. 2. Pp. 113-122. P. 119.


“Primate species are adept at dealing with shifting environmental challenges with different tactics: a social group might increase or decrease their daily path length, expand or contract their home ranges throughout the year, increase overall travel time to ensure more food sources are located, or decrease travel time to conserve energy.

“Such flexibility has been a component of primate evolutionary success in myriad habitats, but three aspects of foraging behavior highlight the role of cognitive functioning and behavioral plasticity in anthropoids: color vision and finding foods; memory and spatial mapping of resources; and communication about food sources as well as predators.” MacKinnon, Katherine & A. Fuentes. 2012. “Primate Social Cognition, Human Evolution, and Niche Construction: A Core Context for Neuroanthropology.” Pp. 67-102. From Lende, Daniel & G. Downey (Eds). The Encultured Brain: An Introduction to Neuroanthropology. MIT Press. P. 71.


“Integrated and holistic theories such as niche construction force us to think of sociality in a new light–not as an independent category, but as an interrelated aspect of a generated niche. It highlights how social living encompasses the cognitive developmental environment; social resources and competition for those resources; alteration of the selective landscape (while being continuous with the natural environment); material culture in humans and some of the apes; and an extension of cognitive capacities into distributed systems of multiple individuals.” MacKinnon, Katherine & A. Fuentes. 2012. “Primate Social Cognition, Human Evolution, and Niche Construction: A Core Context for Neuroanthropology.” Pp. 67-102. From Lende, Daniel & G. Downey (Eds). The Encultured Brain: An Introduction to Neuroanthropology. MIT Press. P. 77.


“We now recognize that it is not the mere size of a primate social group, but its level of social complexity that is correlated to larger neocortices in certain primate taxa. Such complexities can be measured via social play, deception, coalition formations, altruistic acts, and other subtle social strategies.” MacKinnon, Katherine & A. Fuentes. 2012. “Primate Social Cognition, Human Evolution, and Niche Construction: A Core Context for Neuroanthropology.” Pp. 67-102. From Lende, Daniel & G. Downey (Eds). The Encultured Brain: An Introduction to Neuroanthropology. MIT Press. P. 80.


“The ‘cultural intelligence’ hypothesis argues that humans have a species-specific set of social-cognitive skills (that emerge early in ontogeny) for participating in and exchanging knowledge through particularly complex cultural groups.” MacKinnon, Katherine & A. Fuentes. 2012. “Primate Social Cognition, Human Evolution, and Niche Construction: A Core Context for Neuroanthropology.” Pp. 67-102. From Lende, Daniel & G. Downey (Eds). The Encultured Brain: An Introduction to Neuroanthropology. MIT Press. P. 86.


“At least thirteen different definitions of the individual or organism are in active use in the biological literature, and each one divides the fauna and flora into a subtly different parade of individuals.” Clarke, Ellen & S. Okasha. 2013. “Species and Organisms: What Are the Problems?” Pp. 55-75. From Bouchard, Frederic & P. Huneman. From Groups to Individuals: Evolution and Emerging Individuality. MIT Press. P. 59.


“This gives weight to the second characterization of the species problem, according to which the problem consists in the fact that different criteria pick out non-overlapping groups of organisms. This fact stands in the way of any desire to find shared criteria that all and only species meet. This characterization yields the diagnosis that the confusion stems from the traditional assumption that species meet a shared set of criteria–reproductive isolation, phenotypic similarity, common ancestry, and so on. This assumption holds in some cases, such as Tasmanian devils, humans, and certain birds, but as soon as we turn our attention to other examples the criteria fail to coincide. We are then left wondering whether to privilege one criterion over the rest or to admit a plethora of species concepts, as recommended by certain ‘pluralists about species.’ Constructivist pluralists want us to recognize as many distinct kinds as seem useful. For example, botanists may want to call Rubus a single morphologically diverse species, while greengrocers feel it useful to distinguish raspberries from loganberries. Other authors reject the species category altogether in the face of this plurality, or try to find a new multi-criterial notion that can combine inconsistent criteria.

“Likewise different definitions of the individual organism tend to overlap in higher vertebrates, but once you move away from that group the criteria dramatically diverge. A pig meets many of the different criteria that have been touted as definitional of a biological individual – unique/homogeneous genotype; germ soma separation; bottleneck life cycle; functional integration; immune response; policing mechanisms; spatial cohesion, and so on. But no consider Dictyostelium. If we hold that germ soma separation and functional integration are the key properties of organisms, then we might say that the slug is the organism. On the other hand, if spatial cohesion and development from a bottleneck are more ;important, then we will be moved to view the cells as individual organisms.

“Characterized this way, the range of responses to the organism problem closely mirrors that to the species problem. Some authors prioritize a single criterion or set of criteria, while pluralists split the organism category into numerous kinds. Disjunctivist pluralists argue that the organism concept conflates several distinct natural kinds. For example, Jack Wilson says that the functional individual sometimes overlaps with the genetic individual, although in cases of organ transplantation or tissue culture they come apart. Eliminativists argue against the retention of any organism concept, while others search for ways to reconcile the multiplicity of criteria with a single underlying category.” Clarke, Ellen & S. Okasha. 2013. “Species and Organisms: What Are the Problems?” Pp. 55-75. From Bouchard, Frederic & P. Huneman. From Groups to Individuals: Evolution and Emerging Individuality. MIT Press. Pp. 63-4. Reference is to Wilson, Jack. 1999. Biological Individuality: The Identity and Persistence of Living Entities. Cambridge University Press.


“Similarly, people who work on plants have used many different words to distinguish kinds of individual organism (such as individuoid, colonoid, morphont, phytomer, metamer, ramet, genet, module and meristem), whereas zoologists generally treat the term as unproblematic.” Clarke, Ellen & S. Okasha. 2013. “Species and Organisms: What Are the Problems?” Pp. 55-75. From Bouchard, Frederic & P. Huneman. From Groups to Individuals: Evolution and Emerging Individuality. MIT Press. P. 65.


“Ereshefsky, for example, writes, ‘General discussions of the species problem tend to focus on species concepts that were designed with eukaryotes in mind.’ He argues that microbiology requires its own unique ‘recombination’ species concept, in order to handle the fact that prokaryotes exchange genes preferentially within groups, but without ever totally blocking gene flow with outsiders.” Clarke, Ellen & S. Okasha. 2013. “Species and Organisms: What Are the Problems?” Pp. 55-75. From Bouchard, Frederic & P. Huneman. From Groups to Individuals: Evolution and Emerging Individuality. MIT Press. P. 65. Subquote is from Ereshefsky, M. “Microbiology and the species problem.” Biol Philos. 25:553-568. 2010. P. 553.


“This second characterization of the species-organism problem is quite different from the first one, at least at first blush. The first characterization regards borderline cases, which resist easy classification, as giving rise to the problems; this is quite different from the idea that multiple nonequivalent criteria are the root cause.” Clarke, Ellen & S. Okasha. 2013. “Species and Organisms: What Are the Problems?” Pp. 55-75. From Bouchard, Frederic & P. Huneman. From Groups to Individuals: Evolution and Emerging Individuality. MIT Press. P. 66.


“Several authors have been explicit that the biospecies concept just isn’t meant to apply over time, but should only be used to divide extant organisms into species. For example, ‘the Biological Species Concept is principally meant to be applied at a given point in time,’ write Lee and Wolsan. This implies that in diachronic settings there can be a problem of vagueness, even in the absence of dispute over the correct definition to use (i.e., even if we agree that the biospecies concept is the right concept). All living humans are unambiguous members of Homo sapiens according to the biospecies concept, because they all belong to populations that are able to interbreed with one another. However, if we want to answer a question about when in time Homo sapiens came into existence, all clarity evaporates. It seems reasonable to suppose that no non-vague answer can be given, because the process by which Homo sapiens formed an isolated breeding population, separate from other Homo groups, will have occurred gradually, over a long period of time.” Clarke, Ellen & S. Okasha. 2013. “Species and Organisms: What Are the Problems?” Pp. 55-75. From Bouchard, Frederic & P. Huneman. From Groups to Individuals: Evolution and Emerging Individuality. MIT Press. P. 67.


“By examining the non-linear dynamics of these systems, a number of cognitive scientists with Walter Freeman heading the tip of the spear, have begun to provide insight into how populations of neurons (acting as dynamic resonators) can give rise to cognitive processes that provide very close approximations to discrete categorical shifts in processing modes.” Spivey, Michael, S. Anderson & R. Dale. 2009. “The Phase Transition in Human Cognition.” New Mathematics and Natural Computation. Vol. 5, No. 1: 197-220. P. 215.


“All these subtleties raise questions about identity and individuation for complex systems. For instance, can a complex system somehow be identified as a distinct individual from its environment? Can various hierarchies of a complex system be individuated from each other? Asking these questions presupposes both that a distinct entity can be identified as well as individuated from other entities. Consider the so-called butterfly effect. Earth’s weather is a complex system, but its potential sensitivity to the slightest changes of conditions leave its boundaries ill-defined if the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Argentina can cause a tornado in Texas three weeks later. Is the butterfly’s flapping an internal or external source of wind and pressure disturbance? Turning towards space, is the magnetosphere surrounding the earth, which exhibits ‘space weather’ and shields the earth from lethal solar radiation, a distinct weather system or a qualitatively different extension of the Earth’s weather system?

“It certainly seems plausible to consider butterflies, the Earth’s weather and the Earth’s magnetosphere (with its space weather) as numerically distinct systems (or as numerically distinct subsystems of a larger system). After all, according to Leibniz’s principle of the identity of indiscernibles, these different ‘systems’ do not share all their properties. On the other hand, systems are generally composed of subsystems that differ in properties, so given the lack of absolute boundaries between them, perhaps the best way to conceive of the butterfly-weather-magnetosphere system is as one very large complex system. As suggested by the phenomenological properties of complex systems, it is often the case that distinctions between parts and wholes, hierarchies and the like are pragmatic rather than absolute.” Bishop, Robert. 2011. “Metaphysical and Epistemological Issues in Complex Systems.” Pp. 105-136. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 115.


“One epistemic difficulty is the mismatch between the accuracy or level of fine-grained access to the dynamics of a complex system and its underlying states and properties (i.e., the ontic / epistemic distinction). If a particular measurement apparatus only samples some even relatively fine-grained partition of the dynamical states of a complex system, the result will effectively be a mapping of (perhaps infinitely) many system states into a much smaller finite number of measurement apparatus states. Such a mapping produces an apparent complexity – epistemic dynamical states in the measurement apparatus’ projected space – that may not faithfully represent the complexity (or simplicity) of the system’s actual dynamics – ontic states.” Bishop, Robert. 2011. “Metaphysical and Epistemological Issues in Complex Systems.” Pp. 105-136. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 116.


“The same problem that small changes in data or model in nonlinear contexts are not guaranteed to yield proportionate model outputs or monotonically improved model performance also plagues policy assessment using nonlinear models.” Bishop, Robert. 2011. “Metaphysical and Epistemological Issues in Complex Systems.” Pp. 105-136. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 121.

“There is no consensus account of what causes are; rather, there is a set of accounts – e.g. counterfactual, logical, probabilistic, process, regularity, structural – that each have strengths and weaknesses....” Bishop, Robert. 2011. “Metaphysical and Epistemological Issues in Complex Systems.” Pp. 105-136. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 125.


“In contrast, when linear superposition breaks down, as it does for complex systems, such systems often exhibit behaviors reflecting the fact that individual system components are not independent of each other. Moreover, the behavior of individual system components are not even independent of the wholes (and various hierarchies in between). Hierarchies and wholes act to enable or constrain various possibilities for component behavior relative to what would be possible for the components if the hierarchies and wholes were absent.” Bishop, Robert. 2011. “Metaphysical and Epistemological Issues in Complex Systems.” Pp. 105-136. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 128.


“Although perhaps under analyzed, science also includes structuring laws that govern or structure the range of possibilities, but do not necessarily specify which of those possibilities are actualized.” Bishop, Robert. 2011. “Metaphysical and Epistemological Issues in Complex Systems.” Pp. 105-136. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 130.


“Although there is no unified branch or corpus of mathematics that constitutes network theory, there exists however an increasingly indispensable ‘tool-kit’ of methods and disciplines that merge into what we might call network theory: this ranges from dynamical systems theory to network topology, from random boolean network models to coupled oscillators.” Moreno, Alvaro, K. Ruiz-Mirazo & X. Barandiaran. 2011. “The Impact of the Paradigm of Complexity on the Foundational Frameworks of Biology and Cognitive Science.” Pp. 311-333. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 313.


“More precisely, biological and cognitive systems show an intricate and rich functional diversity with a modular and hierarchical dynamic organization. This organization is endowed with global/collective properties, like highly robust self-maintenance, and shows singular patterns of behaviour in their environments, like agency, multiscale adaptive flexibility, etc. Most of these features are missing from the complex dynamic models of the standard sciences of complexity, and suggests that biological and cognitive systems hide not only more complexity than physical systems, but rather different forms of it.” Moreno, Alvaro, K. Ruiz-Mirazo & X. Barandiaran. 2011. “The Impact of the Paradigm of Complexity on the Foundational Frameworks of Biology and Cognitive Science.” Pp. 311-333. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 314.


“Instead of just an asymmetric, bottom-up, causal action from the constitutive components of the system to its global properties, a new type of process appears: the constraining action of supramolecular aggregates and long-range patterns on molecular dynamics, modifying or channelling low level interactions so that a kind of feedback is created and a recurrent loop is eventually reached....

“In those systems where we find holistic properties, the maintenance of the global stability is the result of a dynamical causal loop, such that, at least one macroscopic constraint (created by the underlying microscopic interactions) is causally necessary for the maintenance of such a loop. In other words, there is, in a minimal sense, a form of self-maintenance....”

“... the type of holistic phenomena we just described (let us call it ‘primary holism’) is ubiquitous in the biological and cognitive world: e.g., in the cell cycle, in the symmetry breaking phenomenon related to the appearance of morphogenetic fields in development, in the ‘collective intelligence’ of ant or bee colonies, in neural Central Pattern Generators, in the chaotic dynamics of the olfactory bulb neurons in rabbits... It basically reflects how an ensemble of interacting units produces a global property or pattern of behaviour that cannot be ascribed to any single [one] of them, but to the whole ensemble.” Moreno, Alvaro, K. Ruiz-Mirazo & X. Barandiaran. 2011. “The Impact of the Paradigm of Complexity on the Foundational Frameworks of Biology and Cognitive Science.” Pp. 311-333. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 317-20.


“It [complexity of biological and cognitive systems] involves a much richer internal structure, with functional diversity integrated in second-order forms of holism. Biological and cognitive systems are certainly made of a large number of parts or elements acting in non-linear ways, but they also show other features that are absent in non-living complex systems: hierarchical organization, long-term sustainability, historicity, functional diversity, adaptivity and agency. Everywhere in biology and in cognitive science we deal with systems made of parts or elements with different functionalities acting in a selective and harmonized way, coordinating themselves at different time scales, interacting hierarchically in local networks, which form, in turn global networks, and then, meta-networks...” Moreno, Alvaro, K. Ruiz-Mirazo & X. Barandiaran. 2011. “The Impact of the Paradigm of Complexity on the Foundational Frameworks of Biology and Cognitive Science.” Pp. 311-333. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 322.


“Two main messages can be drawn from this survey [of biological and cognitive systems], so far. The first is that modularity and cross-level processes play a very important role in the organization of these highly complex systems. In other words, that functional decomposition is justified but has to be carried out carefully, taking into account different levels of description and their possible interconnections. The second is that redundancy and degeneracy are surely present at these different levels, so accurate decomposition will actually be very hard (if ever possible) to achieve.” Moreno, Alvaro, K. Ruiz-Mirazo & X. Barandiaran. 2011. “The Impact of the Paradigm of Complexity on the Foundational Frameworks of Biology and Cognitive Science.” Pp. 311-333. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 326.


“The impact of complex systems on science is a recent, ongoing and profound revolution.” Hooker, Cliff. 2011. “Introduction to Philosophy of Complex Systems: A.” Pp. 3-90. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 3.


“First, despite enormous progress over the past 30 years, there is no unified science of complex systems.” Hooker, Cliff. 2011. “Introduction to Philosophy of Complex Systems: A.” Pp. 3-90. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 4.


“Today many of the most prominent scientific disciplines could not exist but for the complex systems models and methods on which they depend, among them synthetic and systems biology, climate science, control engineering, neurophysiology, developmental neuropsychology, astrophysics, geo-dynamics, traffic engineering, ... And there cannot be a single scientific discipline that has not now felt the complex systems winds of change blow through it to some extent ....” Hooker, Cliff. 2011. “Introduction to Philosophy of Complex Systems: A.” Pp. 3-90. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 5.


“In short, the complex systems-driven revolution is as deep as the revolutions in physics a century ago, but much wider in impact, even if they do not disturb our sense of fundamental reality in the same way.” Hooker, Cliff. 2011. “Introduction to Philosophy of Complex Systems: A.” Pp. 3-90. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 6.


“There is currently no coherent mathematical framework for complex systems theory, as noted earlier there is instead a collection of diverse specific complex systems models and an equally diverse range of at best weakly interrelated mathematical research groups.” Hooker, Cliff. 2011. “Introduction to Philosophy of Complex Systems: A.” Pp. 3-90. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 8.


“Combined, these developments [dynamical network methods] present a picture of life as a complex system of dynamic processes running on different groups of timescales at different spatial scales, with longer term, more extended processes setting more local conditions for shorter term, less extensive processes while shorter term, local products accumulate to alter the longer term, more extensive processes, the whole interwoven with self-organised assembly of near-to-chaos criticality and resolutions of it.” Hooker, Cliff. 2011. “Introduction to Philosophy of Complex Systems: A.” Pp. 3-90. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 18.


“It has been pointed out many times in the literature that ribosomes are really the only known example of Von Neumann constructors. They fit the description perfectly: on its own a ribosome can do nothing, but in conjunction with the information embedded in a messenger RNA molecule that has been transcribed from DNA it can string amino acids together in the specified sequence. However, and this seems to have been universally ignored, the genetic blueprint for a ribosome is made up of a set of individual blueprints for the myriad of protein and ribonucleic acid components that make up a ribosome; there is no contiguous genetic blueprint for a complete ribosome.” Hofmeyr, Jan-Hendrik. 2007. “The biochemical factory that autonomously fabricates itself: A systems biological view of the living cell.” Pp. 217-242. From Boogerd, Fred, F. Bruggeman, J-H. Hofmeyr & H. Westerhoff. Systems Biology: Philosophical Foundations. Elsevier. P. 237-8.


“It therefore turns out that, at least for life as we know it, unassisted self-assembly is the process that makes self-fabrication, and therefore, life, possible.” Hofmeyr, Jan-Hendrik. 2007. “The biochemical factory that autonomously fabricates itself: A systems biological view of the living cell.” Pp. 217-242. From Boogerd, Fred, F. Bruggeman, J-H. Hofmeyr & H. Westerhoff. Systems Biology: Philosophical Foundations. Elsevier. P. 238.


“In other words, the jump from physics to chemistry seems necessary for material systems to reach a diverse enough spectrum of dynamic, constructive, and emergent behavior. Chemistry allows accumulative construction, a process of interactive feedback between the organization of components and the accumulative assembly of increasingly complex components, which is a consequence of the combinatory – chemical – nature of molecules. This way, chemical networks can reach a special plasticity or potential for diversification.” Moreno, Alvaro. 2007. “A systemic approach to the origin of biological organization.” Pp. 243-268. From Boogerd, Fred, F. Bruggeman, J-H. Hofmeyr & H. Westerhoff. Systems Biology: Philosophical Foundations. Elsevier. P. 249-50.


“Aggregative properties depend on the parts’ properties in a very strongly atomistic manner, under all physically possible decompositions. It is rare indeed that all of these conditions are met. This is the complete antithesis of functional organization. Post-Newtonian science has focused disproportionately upon such properties, or properties meeting some of these conditions, approximately, or some of the time ....” Wimsatt, William. 2008. “Aggregativity: Reductive Heuristics for Finding Emergence.” Pp. 99-110. From Bedau, Mark & P. Humphreys (Eds.) Emergence: Contemporary Readings in Philosophy and Science. MIT Press. P. 101.


“Intuitively, these conditions [for aggregativity] deal with how the system property is affected by: (1) the intersubstitution or rearrangement of parts; (2) addition or subtraction of parts; (3) decomposition and reaggregation of parts; and (4) a linearity condition: no cooperative or inhibitory interactions among the parts in the production or realization of the system property.” Wimsatt, William. 2008. “Aggregativity: Reductive Heuristics for Finding Emergence.” Pp. 99-110. From Bedau, Mark & P. Humphreys (Eds.) Emergence: Contemporary Readings in Philosophy and Science. MIT Press. P.102.


“But a few properties are paradigmatic aggregative properties. The great conservation laws of physics–for mass, energy (in our ordinary domain where they are effectively separated), momentum and net charge indicate that these properties actually do fill the bill. They are aggregative under any and all decompositions, and apply to the most complex of living systems.” Wimsatt, William. 2008. “Aggregativity: Reductive Heuristics for Finding Emergence.” Pp. 99-110. From Bedau, Mark & P. Humphreys (Eds.) Emergence: Contemporary Readings in Philosophy and Science. MIT Press. P. 106.


“Decompositions for which more of the conditions for aggregativity are more closely met seem ‘natural,’ because they provide simpler and less context-dependent regularities, theory, and mathematical models involving these aspects of their behavior.” Wimsatt, William. 2008. “Aggregativity: Reductive Heuristics for Finding Emergence.” Pp. 99-110. From Bedau, Mark & P. Humphreys (Eds.) Emergence: Contemporary Readings in Philosophy and Science. MIT Press. P. 106.


“... various primitive organisms can completely halt their vital processes, resulting in a state called anabiosis.” Zhegunov, Gennadiy. 2012. The Dual Nature of Life. Springer. P. 4.


“Every organism as a carrier of life exists only as a constituent of an ecosystem and its environment. Only in the organism-environment system does the redistribution of matter and energy take place. That is why it is necessary to consider living matter and the sphere of its existence as a large, integrated system. Based on the ongoing processes of constant redistribution of energy and matter within such a system, life can be considered not so much as the existence of autonomous organisms, but rather as a planetary system in which these organisms are just constituents.” Zhegunov, Gennadiy. 2012. The Dual Nature of Life. Springer. P. 5.


“Eukaryotes and multicellular organisms simply claimed the prokaryotic biosphere as a habitat during all subsequent steps of evolution. Even today, the rest of the living world could not exist without microorganisms, as they remain the foundation of the planet’s life maintenance system.” Zhegunov, Gennadiy. 2012. The Dual Nature of Life. Springer. P. 8.



“Only against the background of a ‘slowed-down’ environment, where the transformation of matter and energy flow sluggishly, can specifically made and naturally embedded enzyme molecules clearly distinguish a limited number of interconnected chemical reactions.” Zhegunov, Gennadiy. 2012. The Dual Nature of Life. Springer. P. 18.


“For instance, an average sized adult who consumes 3 kg of food per day for an average of 70 years utilizes approximately 70,000 kg of external substances during his or her lifespan.” Zhegunov, Gennadiy. 2012. The Dual Nature of Life. Springer. P. 66.


“Coaction occurs when one agent’s action is influenced by or occurs in the context of another agent’s action–and together they do something that is not fully attributable to either one alone.... There are several possible forms of coaction, varying in the nature of the linkage between coactors....

“1. Physically coupled action...

“2. Psychologically coordinated action...

“3. Mimicry...

“4. Obedience and conformity...

“...The point of noting these forms of coaction is to highlight the fact, at the outset, that life is full of opportunities in which it may be unclear who is responsible for what is being done, and in which one’s own action can be embedded in complex surroundings that might make the authorship of that action difficult to distinguish.” Wegner, Daniel & B. Sparrow. 2007. “The Puzzle of Coaction.” Pp. 17-37. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. Pp. 18-9.


“The experimental literature on causal attribution in social psychology reveals that people are indeed influenced by the presence of external forces and agents to attribute less causality to self.” Wegner, Daniel & B. Sparrow. 2007. “The Puzzle of Coaction.” Pp. 17-37. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 23.


“The fact is that the accounting of who has done what is a central task of every human system, the foundation of justice and morality.” Wegner, Daniel & B. Sparrow. 2007. “The Puzzle of Coaction.” Pp. 17-37. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 30.


“The importance of authorship accounting in social life makes the role of social cues in authorship judgments far more understandable. It’s not just that other people might blur for us what we think we did–it’s that everyone is continually trying to keep clear on what everyone is doing. There is a great social task at hand, the maintenance of society. With this in mind, the finding that people are influenced by who goes first in the alphabet task begins to take on some meaning. In essence, this realization suggests that authorship judgments have evolved in humans not merely as a way of keeping track of personal causation as compared with the forces of physics in the world, but additionally, and more profoundly, as a way of accounting for own agency in a social world where agency in coaction is the measure of all things.” Wegner, Daniel & B. Sparrow. 2007. “The Puzzle of Coaction.” Pp. 17-37. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. Pp. 30-1.


“The maintenance of social justice and the fabric of society, as well as the continued operation of morality in human affairs–these are all things that some commentators would have us believe are lost if there arises widespread belief in a deterministic model of human action. The implosion of these social necessities does not hinge, however, on the existence of real responsibility. Thoughts do not have to cause actions for morality and human value to continue. Rather, there must be a personal perception of own responsibility.” Wegner, Daniel & B. Sparrow. 2007. “The Puzzle of Coaction.” Pp. 17-37. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 31.


“... we challenge this methodological solipsism [that only individual agents have constitutive efficacy] and argue that interindividual relations and social context do not simply arise from the behavior of individual agents, but themselves enable and shape the individual agents on which they depend. For this, we define the notion of autonomy as both a characteristic of individual agents and of social interaction processes.” De Jaegher, Hanne & T. Froese. 2009. “On the Role of Social Interaction in Individual Agency.” Adaptive Behavior. Vol 17(5):444-460. P. 444.


“The idea that the environment plays a constitutive role for cognition has already been developed extensively in the cognitive sciences since the early 1990s. From robots that use ‘the world as its own best model’, to dynamical accounts of how cognitive behavior emerges out of the dynamics of a brain-body-world systemic whole, to analyses of how environmental structures can provide ‘scaffolding’ for cognitive problem solving, and the hypothesis of extended cognition and the ‘extended mind’, the role of the environment is clearly back on the agenda.” De Jaegher, Hanne & T. Froese. 2009. “On the Role of Social Interaction in Individual Agency.” Adaptive Behavior. Vol 17(5):444-460. P. 445.


“It is better to consider causes as special cases of dynamical processes, viz. those where sufficient energy is transferred to induce a change of state in sufficiently separable system constituents to be identifiable, and to consider dynamics as offering the more general language and criteria.” Skewes, J.C. & C. Hooker. 2009. “Bio-agency and the problem of action.” Biol Philos 24:283-300. Note, P. 285.


“All living organisms are in this way marked by a strong regulatory asymmetry between themselves and their environment: the locus of living process regulation lies distinctively and substantially within them and not in their environment.” Skewes, J.C. & C. Hooker. 2009. “Bio-agency and the problem of action.” Biol Philos 24:283-300. P. 287.


“Merleau-Ponty’s positive response is to treat behaviour as an emergent dynamical whole that has neither agent internal processes nor the external environment as its sole cause. Rather, the agent is understood as having a non-decomposable internal functional organisation modulated by ‘lines of force’ imposed by the environment. In addition, the agent is understood as playing an active role in this modulation, since the lines of force it encounters are in turn largely determined by its behavioural history and its own internal organisation. As a framework, this is a less specific version of our suggestion that the agent be treated as an integrated complex system differentiated by its internal dynamics, which are partly shaped in response to an external world to which it stands in an asymmetrical regulatory relation.” Skewes, J.C. & C. Hooker. 2009. “Bio-agency and the problem of action.” Biol Philos 24:283-300. P. 296.
 

“Because of the growth of complex systems research, anthropologists and archaeologists are now in a position to quantify and mathematically model the spread of ideas, beliefs, technologies, and other aspects of social systems.” Bentley, R. A. & H. Maschner. 2003. “Avalanche of Ideas.” Pp. 61-73. Bentley & Maschner (Eds.) Complex Systems and Archaeology: Empirical and Theoretical Applications. University of Utah Press. P. 73.


“...the landscape project that I have been codirecting with Anthony Snodgrass in Boeotia, Central Greece, can contribute a complementary story for a series of small landscapes. The settlement history, as revealed by complete intensive surface survey, is seemingly one of some 5,000 years of human settlement with all the signs of continuity of occupation, much of which centers around a rotation between a limited number of adjacent locations used by nucleated communities. However, available archives allow us to confirm for at least two historic periods a major new ethnic group arriving to dominate the settled population: the Slavs, in late Roman times, and the Albanians, at the close of the Middle Ages. Since the material culture record fails to respond to these known group composition transformations, I would suggest that similar replacements of dominant colonizations are very probable during the much longer periods of farming prehistory in the region, and perhaps on many occasions. The underlying ‘attractors’ that give rise to recurrent use of closely placed settlement sites are naturally favored sectors of the cultivable landscape, cyclical preferences for nucleated settlement, the availability of prime resources such as water, and defensive advantage.” Bintliff, John. 2003. “Searching for Structure in the Past–or Was It ‘One Damn Thing after Another’?” Pp. 79-83. Bentley & Maschner (Eds.) Complex Systems and Archaeology: Empirical and Theoretical Applications. University of Utah Press. P. 81.


“The theorists who have influenced anthropology have generally argued that social systems have their own dynamics, which compel actors to live out the roles allocated to them by the system. Individual action has generally been marginalized as ‘micro-sociology.’ Bourdieu argued that structural analysis also tends to render variation in individual performances as deviations from an imagined unwritten score (i.e., social structure). Bourdieu and Giddens developed the concept of agency in order to reintegrate action and system. Although Giddens argues that most of the time agents acquiesce unreflectively to the constraints imposed by others’ power, he defines agency as the ability to act in particular ways, where more than one course of action is possible.

“Giddens and Bourdieu are opposed to treating agents’ activities as if they were generated by a pre-existing, overarching structure. They are equally opposed to treating actors as completely rational, playing the pure strategies of game theory.” Layton, Robert. 2003. “Agency, Structuration, and Complexity.” Pp. 103-9. Bentley & Maschner (Eds.) Complex Systems and Archaeology: Empirical and Theoretical Applications. University of Utah Press. P. 103.


“Structure is not a constraining force, external to human action, but something reproduced when the unintended consequences of action feed back to reconstitute the circumstances in which the action occurred. Bourdieu and Giddens argue that agents’ strategies constitute local society and culture. Agency therefore cannot be considered independently of its counterpart, structuration. The cultural or habitual content of strategies is responsible for the distinctive trajectory of a social system over time. This is where agency meets complexity theory, and where anthropology meets archaeology and history.” Layton, Robert. 2003. “Agency, Structuration, and Complexity.” Pp. 103-9. Bentley & Maschner (Eds.) Complex Systems and Archaeology: Empirical and Theoretical Applications. University of Utah Press. P. 104.


“Lorenz coined the term ‘butterfly effect’ to express the notion that a small, chance event could displace the state of a system. The effect of such chance events depends on the stability of the system. Agency could be compared to the butterfly effect. If the system is inherently stable, the effect will be greatly reduced. The more unstable the state of the system, the greater will be the effect of a small, chance deflection from its current trajectory.” Layton, Robert. 2003. “Agency, Structuration, and Complexity.” Pp. 103-9. Bentley & Maschner (Eds.) Complex Systems and Archaeology: Empirical and Theoretical Applications. University of Utah Press. P. 104.


“In short, I am advocating the construction of parallel models of any particular system, but seen from the perspective of a variety of locales and/or observational criteria. The resulting multiple interpretation is ultimately designed to facilitate an interrogative dialogue between divergent data sets. As noted above, a fundamental aspect of this approach is that it opposes the conventionally held definition of models as abstract representations of real-world phenomena and replaces it with the notion of models as a ‘dialogic’ resource, carriers of multiple possible arguments and formalizations, constituting a sketchbook of experimental scenarios.

“Within this schema, four basic knowledge domains are identified as forming the basis of any model of complexity: conceptual, descriptive, instrumental and dialogic.” McGlade, James. 2003. “The Map is Not the Territoy: Complexity, Complication, and Representation.” Pp. 111-19. Bentley & Maschner (Eds.) Complex Systems and Archaeology: Empirical and Theoretical Applications. University of Utah Press. P. 117.


“If complexity theory is ever to establish an alternative platform for academic enquiry, it needs to fulfill its promise as a truly transdisciplinary science within which emergent knowledge based on a wide range of mappings can flourish. Such a pluralist approach to the representation of complex socionatural systems needs to be examined as a legitimate epistemological alternative before we rush headlong into dubious searches for a computational Rosetta Stone.” McGlade, James. 2003. “The Map is Not the Territoy: Complexity, Complication, and Representation.” Pp. 111-19. Bentley & Maschner (Eds.) Complex Systems and Archaeology: Empirical and Theoretical Applications. University of Utah Press. P. 119.


“A system’s effective degrees of freedom are those provided by its inherent variabilities (its dynamical variables) minus those removed through constraints.” Hooker, Cliff. 2011. “Introduction to Philosophy of Complex Systems: A.” Pp. 3-90. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 22


“A bifurcation occurs when a structural instability in a system leads to a change in its dynamical form, that is, a change in the structure of its attractor landscape. There are many dynamically different ways in which this can occur, broadly classified as either local – where the form changes continuously as some dynamical parameter or parameters continuously vary – or global changes that involve more complex shifts.” Hooker, Cliff. 2011. “Introduction to Philosophy of Complex Systems: A.” Pp. 3-90. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 26.


“Self-organisation occurs when a system bifurcates, sufficiently under its own dynamics, to a form exhibiting more ordered and/or more complex behaviour.... All things considered, it is probably most useful to consider self-organisation to occur where (and only where) a system bifurcates, sufficiently under its own dynamics, so as to bring to bear an additional system-wide constraint.” Hooker, Cliff. 2011. “Introduction to Philosophy of Complex Systems: A.” Pp. 3-90. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 27.


“A clear, wide criterion would be to identify emergence with bifurcation generally, a clear narrower one would be to identify it with just self-organisation. In each case a new dynamical form does come into being.” Hooker, Cliff. 2011. “Introduction to Philosophy of Complex Systems: A.” Pp. 3-90. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 28.


“Constraints – enabling and coordinated. The term ‘constraint’ implies limitation, most generally in the present context it refers to limited access to dynamical states. Equivalently, it means reducing degrees of freedom by limiting dynamical trajectories to sub-sets of state space. This is the common disabling sense of the term. But constraints can at the same time also be enabling, they can provide access to new states unavailable to the unconstrained system. Equivalently, by coordinatedly decreasing degrees of freedom they provide access to dynamical trajectories inaccessible to the unconstrained system. Thus a skeleton is a disabling constraint, for example limiting the movements of limbs (cf. an octopus), but by providing a jointed frame of rigid components for muscular attachments it also acts to enable a huge range of articulated motions and leverages, transforming an organism’s accessible niche, initiating armor and predator/prey races, and so on. Each of the eight great transitions in evolutionary history, e.g. the emergence of multi-cellular organisms, marks a new coordination of constraints. By permitting reliable cooperation instead of competition and reliable inheritance of the fruits of cooperation, the new coordinations created new complexity and opened up vast new possibilities. Coordinated constraints can work their way around physical laws. For instance, while no single pump can lift water higher than 10 metres, trees lift it many times this by physically linking together (coordinating) many cellular pumps.” Hooker, Cliff. 2011. “Introduction to Philosophy of Complex Systems: A.” Pp. 3-90. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. Pp. 28-9.


“A system contains a module if (and only if), to a sufficiently good approximation, its dynamics can be expressed as an interactive product, the dynamical product of its intra-modular dynamics and its inter-modular dynamics. Three kinds of modularity can be distinguished, spatial or ‘horizontal’, level or ‘vertical’, and process modularity, labelled respectively S, L, and P modularity. Smodularity obtains when there is a principled division of a system into contemporaneous spatial modules such that the system dynamics is expressible as the product of the individual module dynamics and their interactions. This is how we currently design and model buildings and machines of all kinds (from homes to hotels, typewriters to television sets) and how we usually attempt to model both biological populations (the modules being the phenotypes) and often their individual members (the modules being internal organs, or cells). Lmodularity, in contradistinction, obtains when a system’s dynamics may be decomposed into the interactive product of its dynamics at different system constraint levels.... Pmodularity obtains when a system’s dynamics may be decomposed into the interactive product of its process dynamics, and is characteristic of the analysis of organisms and complex machines into mechanisms, such as cellular respiration and pulp mill regulation.

“As motor vehicle design illustrates, all three modularities may be combined, at least to significant extent, in current simple engineering designs.” Hooker, Cliff. 2011. “Introduction to Philosophy of Complex Systems: A.” Pp. 3-90. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. Pp. 31-2.


“Modularity of any kind reduces system complexity, by decreasing dynamical degrees of freedom, while increasing functional and possibly developmental reliability and ease of repair. Like any coordinated constraint it will in general both disable and enable and thus have a complex relationship to higher order system properties like multiplexing and multitasking, adaptability and evolvability.” Hooker, Cliff. 2011. “Introduction to Philosophy of Complex Systems: A.” Pp. 3-90. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 32.


“Hierarchy proper is asymmetry of level (vertical) control in a sufficiently Lmodular system.” Hooker, Cliff. 2011. “Introduction to Philosophy of Complex Systems: A.” Pp. 3-90. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 32.


“Coordinated constraints that enable while disabling, e.g the disabling movement constraints imposed by a skeleton and its enabling of locomotion and leverage, exhibit general constraint duality. The notion has a specific application to forming systems into super-systems through mutual interaction. System constraints may contribute to enabling super-system capacities, for example the role of mitochondria in eukaryote energy production. Conversely, super-system constraints may free up system constraints, for example wherever multi-cellular capacities permit member cells to specialise. But it has a wider application in considering social community formation. We can gain a crude measure of the importance of socialisation to a species by considering the ratio of usable individual parametric plasticity (i.e. adaptiveness) between isolate and communal states. For simpler creatures of lesser neural capacities and more rigid social organisation, such as the insects, the relation is typically negative, individual capacities are sacrificed to communal cohesion and function. Oppositely, humans increase their coherently usable individual capacities enormously through collective culture, even while contributing to communal capacities. Unless we humans have a sophisticated, high quality cultural environment in which to develop there will be vast reaches of our somatic, especially neural, organisational space that we cannot use because it is not accessible to us. Thus for humans there is a positive relationship between individual and communal capacities.” Hooker, Cliff. 2011. “Introduction to Philosophy of Complex Systems: A.” Pp. 3-90. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. Pp. 33-4.


“But only because autonomous systems have their functions serve their own physical regeneration, in turn supporting their functioning, they represent a distinctively new category of complex system organisation. (Though all living systems are ipso facto non-linear, irreversible, open, self-organising, globally constrained, etc. systems, non-living systems may also manifest one or more of these properties, but not autonomy.)” Hooker, Cliff. 2011. “Introduction to Philosophy of Complex Systems: A.” Pp. 3-90. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 35.


“For instance, Mayr provides a list of features distinctively characterizing biological systems and which he claims sets biology apart from other natural sciences: metabolism, regeneration, growth, replication, evolution, regulation, teleology (both developmental and behavioural). However, comparing his list with that of complex systems features above it is pretty clear that, at least in principle, complex systems provide resources for modelling, and hence explaining, each of them and molecular systems and synthetic biology are between them well on the way to doing so.” Hooker, Cliff. 2011. “Introduction to Philosophy of Complex Systems: A.” Pp. 3-90. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 39. Reference is to Mayr, E. 2004. What Makes Biology Unique? Cambridge University Press.


“Then at the least complexity has, I suggest, five quasi-independent dimensions to it: cardinality (component numbers), non-linearity (of interaction dynamics), disorderedness (algorithmic incompressibility), nested organisation (organisational depth) and global organisation.” Hooker, Cliff. 2011. “Introduction to Philosophy of Complex Systems: A.” Pp. 3-90. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 40.


“Every export of manufacture to the environment represents a loss of regulatory organisation to the system, at least of regeneration, but of organisation as well in cases like heart pacemakers. How much openness of cyclic processes can be tolerated before autonomy fails, before so much manufacture, and/or so much regulation of metabolic organisation, is exported to the environment that the locus of organisational regulation shifts from the organism to its environment?” Hooker, Cliff. 2011. “Introduction to Philosophy of Complex Systems: A.” Pp. 3-90. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 43.


“Like respiration, culture is actually constituted by a widely diffused but socially integrative, multi-dimensional, multi-modal, multi-plexed, multi-producted, and multi-phasic complex of highly interactive and plastic, highly organised processes and concomitant states. Consider clothing as a typical human cultural feature: (i) Clothing serves many functions simultaneously (multi-plexed): body temperature control; injury protection; personal comfort; social role/status indication; aesthetic expression; individuality/deviance creation; ... In consequence it is also involved in modulating many different interactions simultaneously, e.g. interaction with the physical surroundings and in various aspects of social interaction. (ii) The realisation of clothing functionality is multi-order and multi-level, requiring people with appropriate internal attitudes, preferences and behaviours; influencing performative aspects of every social activity (e.g. performing authoritatively in a business suit); and involving all of the processes that make up the fabrication, fashion, fabric materials production (including primary production) and recycling, industries. Many different interactive processes thus combine in complex ways to constitute an act or tradition of clothing (multi-dimensional), from production, to performing with and evaluating, to recycling. (iii) There is a large variety of clothing products and product attributes (multi-producted), from swimsuits to business suits to spaces suits. (iv) Clothing is involved in many different biological and social modes (multi-modal): differentiating work and leisure, dangerous work from safe work (and many forms of work, e.g. priest from pilot), and so on. It is also involved in many industrial production and manufacturing modes, from agriculture to petrochemicals, many different distributional modes, from commercial catwalk fashion to charity, etc. (v) This complex of interactive processes persists on many different timescales (asynchronous), from multi-generations for the overall structure of production + wearing/ performing/ evaluating + recycling, to the sub-generational ephemera of fashion attitudes and products. As technology, work role and lifestyle requirements have changed various aspects of this complex have radically changed organisation (non-stationary).” Hooker, Cliff. 2011. “Introduction to Philosophy of Complex Systems: A.” Pp. 3-90. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. Pp. 50-1.


“Culture requires a particular relationship between the responsive, constructive capacities of individuals and the globally binding capacity of the emergent society; too little binding and the society falls apart into a mere aggregate, too much binding and culture is squeezed out by merely rigid habits.” Hooker, Cliff. 2011. “Introduction to Philosophy of Complex Systems: A.” Pp. 3-90. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 51.


“So we need to think of science in these respects as a dynamic system, transforming its own instrumental ‘body’ as it evolves/develops, in delicate and increasingly intimate interactions with its transformation of its experimental and theoretical practices and its epistemological evaluative processes. And of course in strong positive feedback interaction with its economic and social environment through the supply of applied science and the feedback of funding and supporting institutions.... Science also transforms the policy processes that contribute to the dynamics of its environment (e.g. development of economic modelling for policy determination).... This sophisticated and thorough transformative capacity is a crucial part of understanding science as an increasingly autonomous, dynamic cognitive system.” Hooker, Cliff. 2011. “Introduction to Philosophy of Complex Systems: A.” Pp. 3-90. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 54.


“Can the progress of science convince us that there are no individual persons but only biological individuals pushed into certain sorts of behavioral dispositions rather than others by the complex dynamics interlocking their brains and their cultural/social environments? Ross, Don. 2007. “Introduction: Science catches the Will.” Pp. 1-16. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 8.


“My approach specifically exemplifies the general theme of many papers in the book: the self is depicted as virtually created in niche construction, in order to perform the function of simultaneously stabilizing and intermediating the micro-scale dynamics of the distributed individual mind/brain and the macro-scale dynamics of society and culture. Selves, in my view, do not exist despite the complexity of these dynamics at both scales, they exist because of it.” Ross, Don. 2007. “Introduction: Science catches the Will.” Pp. 1-16. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 13.


“More precisely, behavior is (i) a phenomenon resulting from fast nonlinear interactions between the brain of an organism, its body, and the environment, and (ii) a multiple-scaled phenomenon with different levels of organization in which properties at different levels extend at different timescales and both affect and are affected by lower- and higher-level properties. This implies that behavior is an emergent property; that is, a property that cannot be inferred by an external observer, even on the basis of a complete description of the elements involved in the interactions and of the rules governing the interaction.” Nolfi, Stefano, T. Ikegami & J. Tani. 2008. “Editorial: Behavior and Mind as a Complex Adaptive System.” Adaptive Behavior. 16:101-3. P. 101.


“Normativity challenges physicalist scientific approaches to the understanding of our world because it introduces a value asymmetry (good/bad, true/false, adapted/maladapted) in the description of nature. However, although alien to fundamental physics, normativity is an essential component of biology;...” Barandiaran, Xabier & A. Moreno. 2008. “Adaptivity: From Metabolism to Behavior.” Adaptive Behavior. 16: 325-343. Pp. 325-6.


[To contrast the concept of “autonomy” to autopoiesis where system closure is primary to environmental perturbations] “For a constitutively open notion of autonomy, it is through the flow of matter and energy, required for the appearance of FFE [far from equilibrium] dissipative structures, that the system achieves its unity. Therefore, by definition, the system appears thermodynamically ‘hungry,’ in need of coupling with the environment, which is no longer a mere source of uncomfortable perturbations to be compensated but the source of an essential flow.” Barandiaran, Xabier & A. Moreno. 2008. “Adaptivity: From Metabolism to Behavior.” Adaptive Behavior. 16: 325-343. P. 328.


“We use the term ‘agents’ for those systems that interact with their environments, so that the changes produced between the system and its environment contribute to its self-maintenance.” Barandiaran, Xabier & A. Moreno. 2008. “Adaptivity: From Metabolism to Behavior.” Adaptive Behavior. 16: 325-343. P. 330.


“The simplest mechanisms of adaptive regulation fall into two different categories. One is exemplified in the Operon activation and deactivation of genes as a switch between metabolic pathways according to certain environmental conditions. The other is constituted by a whole subsystem of biochemical pathways not directly involved in the basic self-constructing metabolic network (as is the case of chemotactic agency in Escherichia coli...). However, the common characteristic of both cases is that some degree of dynamic decoupling from the basic constitutive process is required.” Barandiaran, Xabier & A. Moreno. 2008. “Adaptivity: From Metabolism to Behavior.” Adaptive Behavior. 16: 325-343. P. 332.


“However, the use of biochemical mechanisms supporting interactive tasks severely limits the capacity to achieve increasingly complex forms of agency. The reason is that there is a serious bottleneck in the evolution of movement-based agency supported by biochemical mechanisms. First, the bottleneck appears because the level of complexity that the adaptive sub-system can achieve (within the biochemical medium) without severe interference with metabolic processes is very limited. Second, as the size of the organism increases, the fast and plastic correlation between sensor and effector surfaces becomes harder (or even impossible in multicellular organisms) as a result of the slow velocity of diffusion processes. Third, there is also the problem of achieving unified body coordination for displacement.” Barandiaran, Xabier & A. Moreno. 2008. “Adaptivity: From Metabolism to Behavior.” Adaptive Behavior. 16: 325-343. Pp. 334-5.


“Since the very beginning of its evolution, neural organization appeared as an extended network capable of producing a recurrent dynamic of specific patterns independent of the underlying metabolic transformations that the organism undergoes. Unlike chemical signals circulating within the body, which directly interact with metabolic processes because of their diffusive nature, the electrochemical interactions between neurons make open-ended recurrent interactions within the nervous system itself possible.... What makes neural interconnections so special is that they create an incredibly rich and plastic internal world of patterns of fast connections, hierarchically decoupled from the metabolic processes.” Barandiaran, Xabier & A. Moreno. 2008. “Adaptivity: From Metabolism to Behavior.” Adaptive Behavior. 16: 325-343. P. 335.


“The space of motor outputs to be instructed by the organism is not a uniform multidimensional space defined by a number of degrees of freedom. In contrast, motor embodiment defines a biased ‘landscape’ within that space determined by the shape, elasticity of joints, relative orientation, and a host of similar body constraints.... In fact, the world of a behaving organism is not so much an independent, physical world but the coupling of this external world with the ‘internal’ world...” Barandiaran, Xabier & A. Moreno. 2008. “Adaptivity: From Metabolism to Behavior.” Adaptive Behavior. 16: 325-343. P. 339.


“There are two basic categories of process stability. The first is what might be called energy well stabilities. These are process organizations that will remain stable so long as no above threshold energy impinges on them. Contemporary atoms would be a canonical example: they are constituted as organizations of process that can remain stable for cosmological time periods.

“The second category of process stability is that of process organizations that are far from thermodynamic equilibrium. Unlike energy well stabilities, these require ongoing maintenance of their far from equilibrium conditions. Otherwise, they go to equilibrium and cease to exist.

“Also in contrast to energy well stabilities, far from equilibrium stabilities cannot be isolated for significant period of time. If an energy well stability is isolated, it goes to internal thermodynamic equilibrium and retains its stability. If a far from equilibrium process organization is isolated, it goes to equilibrium and ceases to exist.” Bickhard, Mark. 2011. “Systems and Process Metaphysics.” Pp. 91-104. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. Pp. 92-3.


“In a process view, organization cannot be delegitimated as a potential locus of causality without eliminating causality from the universe.” Bickhard, Mark. 2011. “Systems and Process Metaphysics.” Pp. 91-104. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 95.


“Positing a metaphysical realm of substances or atoms induces a fundamental split in the overall metaphysics of the world. In particular, the realm of substances or atoms is a realm that might be held to involve fact, cause, and other physicalistic properties and phenomena, but it excludes such phenomena as normativity, intentionality, and modality into a second metaphysical realm. It induces a split metaphysics....

“Adopting a process metaphysics, however, reverses the exclusion of emergence, and opens the possibility that normativity, intentionality, and other phenomena might be modeled as natural emergents in the world.” Bickhard, Mark. 2011. “Systems and Process Metaphysics.” Pp. 91-104. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 95.


“A process view lends itself naturally to consideration of chaotic dynamics, and thus, to consideration of the differentiation between determinism and predictability that chaotic phenomena introduce: chaotic phenomena are fully deterministic, but cannot in principle be predicted into a far future, given any finite resolution of system state.

“It should be noted, however, that this is a claim about the determinism and prediction of specific dynamic trajectories in full detail. Chaotic dynamics may well be predictable in more general senses, such as if the space of possible dynamic trajectories is organized into a few attractor basins, with, perhaps, chaotic attractors in those basins. Even in such a case, predictions about what the attractor possibilities are might be accurate.” Bickhard, Mark. 2011. “Systems and Process Metaphysics.” Pp. 91-104. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 96.


“In conjunction with thermodynamic considerations, a process metaphysics overturns standard assumptions about the individuation of entities in terms of boundaries. For open, far from equilibrium systems in particular, it is not clear what form such questions or their answers should take.

“For example, what are the boundaries of a whirlpool or a hurricane” Or a candle flame? The candle flame is an interesting first focus: here we find various kinds of phase changes, such as between the region that engages in combustion and the region that feeds and cleans up after that combustion. It might seem that this is similar to the phase change boundary that individuates a rock, but note that a rock also has a co-extensive boundary at which it can be isolated, and also a co-extensive boundary at which it can be pushed. A candle flame has no clear boundary at which it can be isolated, though a distant boundary might permit it to continue for a time, and it has no boundary at which it can be pushed at all.” Bickhard, Mark. 2011. “Systems and Process Metaphysics.” Pp. 91-104. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 98.


“A process metaphysics raises basic metaphysical issues about unity, individuation, and boundaries. They are (multiple kinds of) temporal phenomena of (some) processes – not inherent characteristics of what it is to exist.” Bickhard, Mark. 2011. “Systems and Process Metaphysics.” Pp. 91-104. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 101.


“A hurricane or a candle flame illustrates a number of changes forced by a shift to a process metaphysical framework. They are roughly constituted as a twist or knot in the topology of the flow of ongoing process. Note that the point here is not just that the hurricane or flame is dependent on such process organization, but that they are constituted in such process organization.

“As such, they have no inherent boundaries, individuation, supervenience bases, and so on. They are not entities in any classical sense. Questions about such properties – their existence, emergence, nature, maintenance, etc. – cannot be taken for granted, as is (or appears to be) the case within a particle framework. Instead, questions about such phenomena become legitimate and important scientific questions, questions that are not well motivated by a substance or particle metaphysics. Such questions take on an especially central importance in realms of science that address inherently far from equilibrium phenomena, such as biology and studies of the brain and mind. These are the realms in which the limitations and failures of classical substance and particle presuppositions are most damaging.

“Conversely, a process metaphysics maintains the historical trend in science toward process. It is consistent with contemporary foundational physics, and integrates thermodynamics in a central and natural way. It makes emergence a genuine metaphysical possibility, and, in particular, it renders normative emergence a class of phenomena that are scientifically addressable. It requires changes, such as the shift to a default of change rather than stasis, and it raises multiple questions about properties that have historically often been presupposed, such as individuations and boundaries. But it is arguably the only framework that offers a viable orientation for the scientific future.” Bickhard, Mark. 2011. “Systems and Process Metaphysics.” Pp. 91-104. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 102.


“Bringing phenotypic and developmental plasticity into the evolutionary picture eliminates the theoretical need for strict linkage between genetic and phenotypic complexity.” Newman, Stuart. 2011. “Complexity in Organismal Evolution.” Pp. 335-354. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 340.


“... while organisms can indeed evolve by incremental adaptation to new conditions based on existing phenotypic variability, increase in complexity of a lineage is often associated with phenotypic innovation, and this can occur abruptly, thus deviating from classic Darwinian gradualism. Moreover, while the ‘genotype determines phenotype’ scenario (neo-Darwinism) is a biologically reasonable model for generating the raw material of both gradual and saltational evolutionary change, so is the ‘phenotype precedes genotype’ scenario. All of these ideas flow directly from relinquishing strict genetic determinism, recognizing the existence of phenotypic and developmental plasticity, and appreciating the nonlinear and self-organizing dynamics of developmental mechanisms.” Newman, Stuart. 2011. “Complexity in Organismal Evolution.” Pp. 335-354. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 343.


“... all the constructional features of animal bodies and their organs, including multiple tissue layers, body cavities, tubular and branched structures, and appendages, which emerged around 600 million years ago, can potentially be understood by the mobilization of physical processes that were newly efficacious with the emergence of multicellular aggregates.” Newman, Stuart. 2011. “Complexity in Organismal Evolution.” Pp. 335-354. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 345.


“Self-organization in chemical or biological systems is a non-equilibrium, generally irreversible phenomenon in which structures form by bulk rearrangement of matter dependent on dissipation of energy.

“Self-assembly, in contrast, is what occurs when oil and water separate or when a mineral crystal or snowflake forms. Such structures, which are seen in mesoscale or nanoscale systems, are stable without any input of energy or mass. Self-assembly is an equilibrium, often reversible phenomenon of components that interact with inherent specificity. Self-assembled structures, once they form, may of course mediate or participate in energy-consuming processes, and the ‘molecular machines’ found inside and on the surfaces of cells have this character.” Newman, Stuart. 2011. “Complexity in Organismal Evolution.” Pp. 335-354. From Hooker, C., D. Gabbay, P. Thagard & J. Woods, Eds. Philosophy of Complex Systems. Elsevier. Volume 10 of Handbook of the Philosophy of Science. P. 346.


“What is particularly striking in systems biology discourses is that many definitions of the field merge the social and the epistemic. Systems biology is described as being integrative, not only of data and technologies, but also of disciplines and people.” Calvert, Jane & J. Fujimura. 2011. “Calculating life? Dueling discourses in interdisciplinary systems biology.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. 42: 155-163. P. 156.


“This [hypothesis later experiments] is very different from the idealised Popperian model that many scientists have used to represent how science proceeds, where a hypothesis is first formulated and then tested against the available data. Systems biologists, in contrast, will often generate hypotheses from the data.” Calvert, Jane & J. Fujimura. 2011. “Calculating life? Dueling discourses in interdisciplinary systems biology.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. 42: 155-163. P. 157.


“Thus, in the actual science, as opposed to the rhetorics exchanged between systems biologists and molecular biologists, it is often difficult to separate hypothesis-drive[n] and hypothesis-generating studies. Ideker et al. have also written that the integration of both discovery science and hypothesis-driven science ‘is one of the mandates of systems biology.” Calvert, Jane & J. Fujimura. 2011. “Calculating life? Dueling discourses in interdisciplinary systems biology.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. 42: 155-163. P. 157. Reference is to Ideker, T., Galitski, T. & L. Hood. 2001. “A new approach to decoding life: Systems biology.” Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics. 2: 343-72.


“Systems biology largely take its inspiration from physics, while a clearly stated aim of synthetic biology is to make biology into an engineering discipline.” Calvert, Jane & J. Fujimura. 2011. “Calculating life? Dueling discourses in interdisciplinary systems biology.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. 42: 155-163. P. 160.


“Because of the limits of linear cause-and-effect thinking, it is not uncommon that some type of action will have unintended consequences....”

“Once we start looking at multiple causality, we also have multiple avenues for intervention.” Smith-Acuna, Shelly. 2011. Systems Theory in Action: Applications to Individual, Couples, and Family Therapy. John Wiley & Sons. P. 35.


“Another systems concept that moves away from linear cause and effect is equifinality, which refers to the fact that the same outcome can be reached from different original conditions.” Smith-Acuna, Shelly. 2011. Systems Theory in Action: Applications to Individual, Couples, and Family Therapy. John Wiley & Sons. P. 38.


“First, in social contexts, behaviors simultaneously serve as stimuli and reinforcement, so that a behavior will elicit a response from another family member, and this response will elicit a subsequent behavior. Rather than a linear stimulus-response pattern, we see an ongoing and mutual cycle of people shaping each other’s behavior.” Smith-Acuna, Shelly. 2011. Systems Theory in Action: Applications to Individual, Couples, and Family Therapy. John Wiley & Sons. P. 43.


“In sum, systems theory helps us analyze and transform problematic communication when there is an inconsistency between message sent and message received. It allows us to look at the literal meaning, or report function, of a communication and to see that this meaning is always grounded in the context of relationship variables, or the command function of the message. Moving beyond the explicit and implicit aspects of the message, systems theory helps us understand that there is a difference between the sender’s intent and impact and that confusion between these two aspects of communication can be both puzzling and distressing. Finally, communication can have various purposes, from establishing status to solving problems to creating emotional bonds. The ability to create constructive communication is central to productive systems therapy.” Smith-Acuna, Shelly. 2011. Systems Theory in Action: Applications to Individual, Couples, and Family Therapy. John Wiley & Sons. P. 66.


“What I find especially useful about structural approaches is the sophistication involved in positioning relationships in the system. That positioning starts right from the beginning, as the therapist positions herself as someone who is both helpful and challenging to the entire system.” Smith-Acuna, Shelly. 2011. Systems Theory in Action: Applications to Individual, Couples, and Family Therapy. John Wiley & Sons. P. 96.


“A simple description of structural therapy interventions is that the therapists must give every family member a stroke and a kick.” Smith-Acuna, Shelly. 2011. Systems Theory in Action: Applications to Individual, Couples, and Family Therapy. John Wiley & Sons. P. 98.


“... systems theory can easily be used as a metatheory, which can serve as a foundation for the other major psychological schools of thought.” Smith-Acuna, Shelly. 2011. Systems Theory in Action: Applications to Individual, Couples, and Family Therapy. John Wiley & Sons. P. 131.


“Further, systems theory helps us see that critical thinking, ultimately, is contextual thinking.” Smith-Acuna, Shelly. 2011. Systems Theory in Action: Applications to Individual, Couples, and Family Therapy. John Wiley & Sons. P. 139.


“Newborns of all highly organized mammalian groups are precocial, and their sensory organs are well developed and capable of functioning. In form, apart from some slight proportional deviations, particularly in the size of the head, these newborns are miniature versions of the mature form, and their behavior and locomotion are to a large extent the same as their parents’. The infant also has command of the means of social communication that are typical for its species. This is the state at birth for ungulates, seals, and whales, as well as for anthropoids....

“... a true mammal of the human type would have to have a newborn whose bodily proportions are similar to those of the adult, one that can assume the erect posture appropriate to its species, and that has command of at least the rudiments of our communication system–language (and the language of gestures). This theoretically necessary stage does in fact exist during the course of our development: the stage is reached about a year after birth. After one year, the human attains the degree of formation in keeping with its species that a true mammal must have already realized by the time of its birth. Therefore, if the human were to arrive at this state in the true mammalian mode, our pregnancy would have to be longer than it is by about that one year; it would have to last for about twenty-one months.” Portmann, Adolf. 1990 (1968). A Zoologist Looks at Humankind. Columbia University Press. Translated by Judith Schaefer. Pp. 50-1.


“It is in keeping with the relatively low level of development of prefigured, instinctive modes of behavior in man that no particular environment, no particular sector of nature seems to have been allocated as our habitat. There is no environment for humans that can be posited the way it usually can for an animal: the steppes or the forest, for example, rivers or mountains, or even the much more circumscribed territory of forest canopy, thicket, or rocky bottom. On the contrary, it suits our whole mode of existence for us to create a special ‘world’ in any natural area we visit, to build it up out of natural components transformed by human activity.” Portmann, Adolf. 1990 (1968). A Zoologist Looks at Humankind. Columbia University Press. Translated by Judith Schaefer. P. 75.


“For an animal, whether and to what extent a given component of nature affects its being, whether and how much the component has a vital meaning within the environment, is decided ahead of time through the animal’s environmentally bound organization. In contrast, human design, open to the world, creates a completely different relationship to the natural environment. Even the most unlikely component of the environment can be meaningful to us; we are capable of separating any detail at will from the undifferentiated field of perception, and emphasizing it. Everything in the environment can pertain to us; even remote things can acquire meaning, just as that which is hidden from our ordinary senses can. And so, research is continually seeking unknown, prospective vehicles for meaning, whereas the most active, inexhaustible, sniffing, scenting, tracking animal is always seeking only the vehicles predetermined by its organization to be meaningful.

“Is there anything in animals that compares with this human capacity for lending meaning to the meaningless and for the creation of new vehicles of meaning? In fact, there are in higher forms of animal life beginnings that hint at the possibility of ‘interest in the unfamiliar.’ The highest modes of behavior are found in species that are singled out, with good reason, as being ‘curious.’” Portmann, Adolf. 1990 (1968). A Zoologist Looks at Humankind. Columbia University Press. Translated by Judith Schaefer. P. 77.


“We can observe ourselves as well as other objects and events from a standpoint chosen, as it were, outside ourselves. All sorts of words have been used to try to describe and define this peculiar human existential possibility. For example, the situation of constraint imposed on an animal by its mode of existence is termed ‘concentric,’ to distinguish it from the possibility we have of stepping outside ourselves, which is termed ‘excentric.’” Portmann, Adolf. 1990 (1968). A Zoologist Looks at Humankind. Columbia University Press. Translated by Judith Schaefer. P. 78.


“In humans, maturation processes, which did indeed begin within the mother’s body, go through their most important phases in combination with the experiences offered by a much richer environment with many sources of stimulation to the organism capable of development. Thus, in humans, courses of events ordained by natural law take place during the first year of life not in the all-purpose environment of the womb but under unique circumstances; each phase of postpartum life intensifies this uniqueness by increasing the possibilities for divergent, individual situations. And so it is that already during its first year of life, the human child is subject to the laws of ‘history,’ at a time when the human as a true mammal would still have to be developing within the darkness of the womb, in conditions governed exclusively by natural law. Even during this extrauterine springtime, not only do ‘processes’ of the most general kind take place, but also countless ‘events’ that are unique–and often fateful, although in the context in which they appear we are not completely able to assess them as such.” Portmann, Adolf. 1990 (1968). A Zoologist Looks at Humankind. Columbia University Press. Translated by Judith Schaefer. Pp. 91-2.


“At about a year and a half, attempts to scribble slowly begin to appear; in many ways, these efforts resemble babbling. Here too, there is much practicing, much neuromuscular testing of situations, of possibilities for arm and hand movement....

“Representation of objects begins at the end of the second or the beginning of the third year and, for most children, soon becomes quite compelling. Active striving to copy lasts a few more years before it drops off abruptly in most children and is gone entirely before puberty, by the eighth to the tenth years. It is probably appropriate to recall here that the time when the urge to represent things is active is also the great period of brain formation, that during this time, the brain reaches about 90 percent of its mass.

“If we survey once more the amount of material to be acquired, the extent of just the imitation required for understanding the most significant part of language and the most important environmental relationships and for fixing what is learned so that it continues to be useful, the duration of the growth processes in man appears in its most important light and in its true significance.” Portmann, Adolf. 1990 (1968). A Zoologist Looks at Humankind. Columbia University Press. Translated by Judith Schaefer. P. 114.


“Excepting humans, apes are today much less numerous and successful than the monkeys. Indeed, there are only four species of great apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans), along with several species of lesser apes (the gibbons and siamangs), all of which are declining in terms of numbers. They are, in a sense, a relic of an earlier age, the Miocene (23 million to 5 million years ago), during which these large, slow-reproducing anthropoids were most varied and successful.” Coolidge, Frederick & T. Wynn. 2009. The Rise of Homo sapiens: The Evolution of Modern Thinking. Wiley-Blackwell. P. 77.


“ToM (theory of mind) is related to executive functions. Children’s performances on ToM tests and tests of executive functions have positive correlations between 0.30 and 0.60. This correlation between ToM and general problem-solving ability suggests that ToM is not an encapsulated, domain-specific cognitive ability that evolved to solve a narrow adaptive problem, but arose from a need for flexible response to complex but generic problems.” Coolidge, Frederick & T. Wynn. 2009. The Rise of Homo sapiens: The Evolution of Modern Thinking. Wiley-Blackwell. P. 82.


“Anthopoids do use tactical deception, but without ToM they are relatively poor liars. Liars must have the ability to inhibit their emotive response. Such ‘inhibition of a prepotent response’ is one of the key components of executive functions.... and the primate evidence also suggests that the selective agent may have been success in tactical deception.” Coolidge, Frederick & T. Wynn. 2009. The Rise of Homo sapiens: The Evolution of Modern Thinking. Wiley-Blackwell. P. 83.


“The Hominini include living humans, the direct ancestors of humans, and a number of closely related, but non-ancestral, species that lived alongside human ancestors for much of human evolution. Biological systematists place all of these into the same ‘tribe’ because they share a number of distinguishing characteristics not possessed by other African apes. Anatomically, the most important of these ‘derived’ features are linked to four adaptive complexes: locomotion, diet, reproduction, and behavior. Hominins are habitually bipedal. Our anatomy differs dramatically from that of other apes because we move on our hind legs alone. This very odd way of moving about presents problems of balance that have reshaped our feet, legs, hips, spines, and even our skulls. Hominins also have an unusual way of chewing, at least for an ape, termed ‘rotary chewing.’ When we chew our mandibles make a circular motion so that our lower molars grind past our upper molars. The enamel on our molars is thicker than that of an ape’s, we have much smaller canines, and our palate has an arch shape instead of the box shape of an ape. These are adaptations to heavy chewing, at least heavier chewing than we normally associate with fruit-eating apes. Hominins also have a derived reproductive strategy. The natural interval between births for a human female is actually shorter than that of a chimpanzee or gorilla (about two to three years vs. four to six years). Exacerbating the problems that more young children present, human infants are ‘altricial,’ which means that they are less mature at birth, including their brains, than infants of other apes.” Coolidge, Frederick & T. Wynn. 2009. The Rise of Homo sapiens: The Evolution of Modern Thinking. Wiley-Blackwell. P. 85.


“Chimpanzees and humans share an additional set of derived features not known for gorillas, and the common ancestor almost certainly had them as well: extractive foraging (for insects, nuts, honey, etc.), tool use in foraging, exploitation of foods with a ‘patchy’ distribution, and a concept of self, if not a complete theory of mind.” Coolidge, Frederick & T. Wynn. 2009. The Rise of Homo sapiens: The Evolution of Modern Thinking. Wiley-Blackwell. P. 87.


“Secondary altriciality refers to the fact that newborn humans have rapidly developing brains in the first year of life while all other primates’ fetal rate of brain growth becomes much slower at birth.” Coolidge, Frederick & T. Wynn. 2009. The Rise of Homo sapiens: The Evolution of Modern Thinking. Wiley-Blackwell. P. 109.


“Archeologists often overlook a fact about bifaces that is really quite important. They were the first tools that probably existed in the minds of their makers as tools. In non-human and Mode 1 tool use the target was task completion – cracking open a nut or butchering a carcass – and the tools were components of those procedures. They did not exist as things apart from those contexts. But bifaces did. Hominins made bifaces, carried them around, and used them again and again as tools and as sources of flakes. The role of tools had changed. Instead of being elements in a procedure, tools themselves had acquired the status of permanent objects in hominin daily life, even when not in use.” Coolidge, Frederick & T. Wynn. 2009. The Rise of Homo sapiens: The Evolution of Modern Thinking. Wiley-Blackwell. P. 112.


“This suite of adaptive developments has led several paleoanthropologists to suggest that the evolution of Homo erectus represented a grade shift away from previous, more ape-like, ways of life. Cachel and Harris have proposed a provocative hypothesis for the niche of Homo erectus, a hypothesis that dovetails nicely with the evidence for a grade shift. They suggest that Homo erectus was a ‘weed’ species, especially adept at invading disrupted environments, such as those common in the Pleistocene, and new locales.” Coolidge, Frederick & T. Wynn. 2009. The Rise of Homo sapiens: The Evolution of Modern Thinking. Wiley-Blackwell. P. 120. Reference is Cachel, S. & J. Harris. 1995. “Ranging patterns, land-use and substistence in Homo erectus from the perspective of evolutionary biology.” From Bower, J & S. Sartono (Eds). Evolution and Ecology of Homo erectus. Pp. 51-66. Pithecanthropus Centennial Foundation.


“Homo heidelbergensis relied on a number of spatial abilities not used by earlier Homo erectus. One is allocentric perception, which was required to produce the three-dimensional symmetries true of the finer bifaces. Allocentric perception is the ability to imagine points of view not centered on one’s own view. To make a three-dimensional symmetry the knapper needed to control the shape of the artifact from many different angles and perspectives, some of which were not directly available (e.g., cross-sections of the artifact that could not be directly sighted).” Coolidge, Frederick & T. Wynn. 2009. The Rise of Homo sapiens: The Evolution of Modern Thinking. Wiley-Blackwell. P. 166.


“Ecological control is the kind of top-level control that does not micromanage every detail, but rather encourages substantial devolvement of power and responsibility. This kind of control allows much of our skill at walking to reside in the linkages and elastic properties of muscles and tendons. And it allows much of our prowess at thought and reason to depend on the robust and reliable operation, often (but not always) in dense brain-involving loops, of a variety of nonbiological problem-solving resources spread throughout our social and technological surround.” Clark, Andy. 2007. “Soft Selves and Ecological Control.” Pp. 101-22. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. Pp. 101-2.


“Humans belong to the interesting class of what I’d like to call open-ended ecological controllers. These are systems that seem to be specifically designed so as to constantly search for opportunities to make the most of body and world, checking for what is available, and then (at various time-scales and with varying degrees of difficulty) integrating it deeply, creating whole new unified systems of distributed problem-solving.” Clark, Andy. 2007. “Soft Selves and Ecological Control.” Pp. 101-22. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 103.


“... minds like ours form larger problem-solving wholes that incorporate and exploit extra-neural stores, strategies, and processes.” Clark, Andy. 2007. “Soft Selves and Ecological Control.” Pp. 101-22. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 104.


“We must reject the seductive but ultimately barely intelligible idea that we (qua individual, thinking things) are nothing more than a sequence of conscious states. The identification of the agent or chooser with such a thin slide of themselves obscures the full suite of mechanisms whose coordinated action is responsible for much of what is distinctive of an individual chooser.” Clark, Andy. 2007. “Soft Selves and Ecological Control.” Pp. 101-22. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 107.


“The challenge, in other words, is this. Given the profound role of non-conscious, opportunistically recruited neural resources in the intentional origination of action, show us why (apart from some unargued prejudice) the machinery of mind and self should be restricted to the neural, the inner, or the biological.” Clark, Andy. 2007. “Soft Selves and Ecological Control.” Pp. 101-22. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 108.


“What seems to matter, for our daily sense of effective agency and choice, is (1) that the conscious mind has a rough and fallible sense of what she (the embodied, embedded, perhaps technologically extended, agent) knows, wants, and can and can’t do, and (2) that sometimes at least, conscious rehearsal can be an active part of the process that leads, within that complex economy, to intentional action. The conscious contribution here need amount to no more than a gentle but subjectively experienced nudge that tips the balance of a complex, and to a large extent unconsciously self-organizing system.” Clark, Andy. 2007. “Soft Selves and Ecological Control.” Pp. 101-22. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 110.


“The conscious mind, on this model, finally emerges as something like a new-style business manager whose role is not to micromanage but to set long-term goals, pursue some slow deliberative reasoning, and gently nudge the larger system in certain directions, all the while actively creating and maintaining the kinds of conditions in which the overall distributed cognitive economy performs at its best.” Clark, Andy. 2007. “Soft Selves and Ecological Control.” Pp. 101-22. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 110.



“There is no self, if by self we mean some central cognitive essence that makes me who and what I am. In its place there is just the ‘soft-self’: a rough-and-tumble control-sharing coalition of processes–some neural, some bodily, some technological–and an ongoing drive to tell a story, to paint a picture in which ‘I’ am the central player.” Clark, Andy. 2007. “Soft Selves and Ecological Control.” Pp. 101-22. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 114.


“... ‘if the brain is generating a self-representation, there’s no reason that the thing can’t have a role in the determination of behavior, indeed, no reason that it can’t acquire an increasingly prominent role.’ But as soon as such a self-representation assumes some kind of causal role (whether by the neat trick of forward-narrating or any other means), we are no longer dealing with a simple self-organizing system that just happens to spin a story about itself. Rather, we are dealing with a system that really does include a self-model as an active principle of organization. Not self-organization but organization by a self-model! Such systems may behave in ways that are more flexible than any first-order self-organizing system because they can use the self-model to select among multiple responses in ways that are driven by that model, hence by stored memories, representations of goals, and so on.” Clark, Andy. 2007. “Soft Selves and Ecological Control.” Pp. 101-22. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. Pp. 116-7. Subquote is from Ismael, J. 2004. “Emergent order: The limits of self-organization.” Unpublished manuscript. P. 6. See also Ismael, J. 2006. The Situated Self. Oxford University Press.


“... I remain wary of the idea of any single such self-model, and much more inclined toward a vision of multiple partial models, most of which may be relatively low level (e.g., a variety of forward models of bodily dynamics).” Clark, Andy. 2007. “Soft Selves and Ecological Control.” Pp. 101-22. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 117.


“Ismael thus depicts a kind of conflict between what she calls self-governing models (ones in which a self-representation plays a crucial, flexibility-promoting causal role) and truly self-organizing ones, in which there is only input-driven self-organization plus a spun narrative. The notion of ecological control; I want finally to suggest, begins to show us how to reconcile these two notions, and hence how to reconcile Dennett’s emphasis on the unreality of selves and Ismael’s recognition that agents with some kind of self-model may exhibit complex dynamics that are the causal consequence of that very self-model. For what I am calling ecological control is what you get when you add an inter-animated and changeable variety of thin slices of self-governance to a system in which the intrinsic self-organizing properties of many subsystems are allowed to bear a lot (but not all) of the problem-solving strain.... According to such a picture, overall self-governance, though real and important, is the emergent outcome of the action of a whole complex of partial self, body, and world models acting as mini ecological controllers in a distributed cognitive economy.” Clark, Andy. 2007. “Soft Selves and Ecological Control.” Pp. 101-22. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. Pp. 117-8. Reference is to Ismael, J. 2006. The Situated Self. Oxford University Press.


“So if we consider memory as a biological function, we are led to consider that memory is certainly not about the past but about present and future behavior. Memory has a biological function to the extent that it serves to organize current behavior.” Boyer, Pascal. 2009. “What Are Memories For? Functions of Recall in Cognition and Culture.” Pp. 3-28. From Boyer, Pascal & J. Wertsch (Eds). Memory in Mind and Culture. Cambridge University Press. P. 3.


“Storing information about the past may be of use to organisms that (a) live in environments stable enough that past situations carry information about present ones, and (b) cannot directly grasp, through perceptual processes, all the relevant features of their present environment.” Boyer, Pascal. 2009. “What Are Memories For? Functions of Recall in Cognition and Culture.” Pp. 3-28. From Boyer, Pascal & J. Wertsch (Eds). Memory in Mind and Culture. Cambridge University Press. Pp. 3-4.


“In this scheme of things, it is more difficult to explain why any organisms should have episodic memories, or what we most commonly refer to as simply ‘memories’ – information about unique, specific situations that they encountered in the past. What is the point of that?... If anything, it would seem that organisms learn about the past mostly to the extent that they can extract from past situations what is not unique about them, and what will be relevant in the future. So why do we have this interesting, and to human minds extraordinarily important, capacity to store unique episodes?” Boyer, Pascal. 2009. “What Are Memories For? Functions of Recall in Cognition and Culture.” Pp. 3-28. From Boyer, Pascal & J. Wertsch (Eds). Memory in Mind and Culture. Cambridge University Press. P. 4.


“The terms ‘what-where-when memory’ and ‘mental time-travel’ (henceforth WWW and MTT) correspond to distinct phenomena, accessing information about a great many unique details of past experiences on the one hand and constructing a simulation of the affective as well as sensory-perceptual experience itself on the other.” Boyer, Pascal. 2009. “What Are Memories For? Functions of Recall in Cognition and Culture.” Pp. 3-28. From Boyer, Pascal & J. Wertsch (Eds). Memory in Mind and Culture. Cambridge University Press. P. 5.


“The capacity for autobiographical memory is served by a variety of orchestrated but distinct cognitive systems. Rubin, for instance, notes that recollection certainly involves modality-specific stores – memory for specific visual, auditory, and linguistics information – as well as a capacity for visual imagery. Beyond these external sources of information, three specific capacities in particular are engaged in autobiographical recall: (1) self-reflection – an ability to have thoughts about one’s own experiences as meta-representations (so experiences past is an experience but not a hallucination); (2) a sense of personal agency and ownership, which connects current thoughts and intentions to a unified self; (3) an ability to represent a continuous self enduring through time.” Boyer, Pascal. 2009. “What Are Memories For? Functions of Recall in Cognition and Culture.” Pp. 3-28. From Boyer, Pascal & J. Wertsch (Eds). Memory in Mind and Culture. Cambridge University Press. P. 6. Reference is to Rubin, D.C. 2006. “The basic-systems model of episodic memory.” Perspectives on Psychological Science. 1(4); 277-311.


“Contrary to the simple assumption that having a past directly creates a self, the developmental literature suggests that having a sense of self is a precondition for entertaining episodic memories as autobiographical.” Boyer, Pascal. 2009. “What Are Memories For? Functions of Recall in Cognition and Culture.” Pp. 3-28. From Boyer, Pascal & J. Wertsch (Eds). Memory in Mind and Culture. Cambridge University Press. P. 7.


“Autobiographical memories, then, depend on what Conway, called a ‘self-system’ of current goals and semantic knowledge of the self.” Boyer, Pascal. 2009. “What Are Memories For? Functions of Recall in Cognition and Culture.” Pp. 3-28. From Boyer, Pascal & J. Wertsch (Eds). Memory in Mind and Culture. Cambridge University Press. P. 8. Reference is to Conway, M.A. 1996. “Autobiographical knowledge and autobiographical memories. From D. Rubin (Ed.). Remembering our past. Studies in Autobiographical Memory. Pp. 67-93. Cambridge University Press.


“From an evolutionary standpoint, Suddendorf and Corballis argued that mental time-travel, like other memory systems, is not so much about the past as about current decision making. In this perspective, episodic recall evolved as a precious way of providing relevant information to organisms faced with complex choices. In particular, a store of accessible past situations, together with most of their experiential material, would provide organisms with a range of examples against which to compare present situations and select the most beneficial course of action. This would suggest that MTT is a recent adaptation, connected with the sudden increase in cognitive flexibility that accompanied the transition to modern Homo sapiens.” Boyer, Pascal. 2009. “What Are Memories For? Functions of Recall in Cognition and Culture.” Pp. 3-28. From Boyer, Pascal & J. Wertsch (Eds). Memory in Mind and Culture. Cambridge University Press. P. 14. Reference is to Suddendorf, T. & M.C. Corballis. 2007. “The evolution of foresight: What is mental time travel, and is it unique to humans?” The Behavioral and brain sciences. 30(3): 299-313.


“As some evolutionarily minded authors have argued, the complexity of many situations of interaction creates a computational bottleneck, such that it becomes difficult to create appropriate behavioral responses on the hoof. For instance, typical social interaction in a small group implies computing the different agendas, relative positions, and differential access to knowledge of n participants as well as n! social relations, a cognitively intensive task that would preempt quick and appropriate responses. In contrast, an organism equipped with a store of preconstrued, similar situations (recalled, imagined, or anticipated) may be able to bypass this computational bottleneck by directly accessing precomputed responses to those counterfactual scenarios.” Boyer, Pascal. 2009. “What Are Memories For? Functions of Recall in Cognition and Culture.” Pp. 3-28. From Boyer, Pascal & J. Wertsch (Eds). Memory in Mind and Culture. Cambridge University Press. Pp. 14-5.


“One of the most general psychological principles is that later counts for less than now; in other words, people, like all other animals, engage in time-discounting.” Boyer, Pascal. 2009. “What Are Memories For? Functions of Recall in Cognition and Culture.” Pp. 3-28. From Boyer, Pascal & J. Wertsch (Eds). Memory in Mind and Culture. Cambridge University Press. P. 19.


“To the extent that prosocial plans make us feel good (and antisocial ones make us feel bad) right now, they may provide rewards that compensate the discount curve and make us choose larger-later, virtuous rewards against smaller-sooner, opportunistic ones. In that sense, emotions such as shame, pride, and guilt may constitute commitment devices that force us to be more prosocial than purely rational, opportunisitc agents.” Boyer, Pascal. 2009. “What Are Memories For? Functions of Recall in Cognition and Culture.” Pp. 3-28. From Boyer, Pascal & J. Wertsch (Eds). Memory in Mind and Culture. Cambridge University Press. P. 19.


“Memories and fantasies can play the role of a brake on impulsiveness and a boost on prosocial patience only to the extent that they are fairly accurate versions of what we did and what we will experience. They make us feel, right now, all the consequences of our actions, by way of emotional rewards. This means that memory for affect should not be revisable. Indeed, despite a large literature focusing on memory distortions, it is remarkable that people seem rather accurate in their evaluation of past emotions.” Boyer, Pascal. 2009. “What Are Memories For? Functions of Recall in Cognition and Culture.” Pp. 3-28. From Boyer, Pascal & J. Wertsch (Eds). Memory in Mind and Culture. Cambridge University Press. P. 20.


“An alternative that recognizes memory in the group without slipping into questionable assumptions about memory of the group is a ‘distributed version’ of collective memory. From this perspective, memory is viewed as being distributed: (a) socially in small group interaction, as well as (b) ‘instrumentally’ in the sense that it involves both active agents and instruments that mediate remembering.” Wertsch, James. 2009. “Collective Memory.” Pp. 117-37. From Boyer, Pascal & J. Wertsch (Eds). Memory in Mind and Culture. Cambridge University Press. P. 119.


“... Vygotsky sought to move beyond the ‘methodological individualism’ that characterized the psychology of his day and continues to be part of the discipline. His basic point was that human action, including mental processes, can be understood only by appreciating its reliance on tools and signs. This attempt to avoid individualistic reductionism should not be taken to amount to a kind of ‘instrumental reductionism’ in which active agents are sidelined to the point of being mere pawns of the tools they employ.” Wertsch, James. 2009. “Collective Memory.” Pp. 117-37. From Boyer, Pascal & J. Wertsch (Eds). Memory in Mind and Culture. Cambridge University Press. P. 119.


“... collective remembering seldom lends itself to being studied with a methodology grounded in the control of variables. Instead, it is viewed as existing in a complex setting and in the service of providing a ‘usable past’. A usable past is almost invariably part of some identity project such as mobilizing a nation to resist an enemy.” Wertsch, James. 2009. “Collective Memory.” Pp. 117-37. From Boyer, Pascal & J. Wertsch (Eds). Memory in Mind and Culture. Cambridge University Press. P. 122.


“In sum, the study of collective memory stands in contrast to research on individual memory in several ways, many of which have to do with disciplines and the methods associated with them. Psychological research on individual memory has tended to rely on laboratory methods that allow for controlled experimentation, and this has encouraged it to focus on memory as an isolated mental process. Furthermore, it has encouraged the privileging of the criterion of accuracy when formulating research questions. In contrast, studies of collective remembering have tended to focus on how memory is part of complex processes such as the negotiation of group identity, and this has led to a view of remembering as contestation and negotiation in social and political spheres. This focus, in turn, has placed issues of accuracy in a secondary position.” Wertsch, James. 2009. “Collective Memory.” Pp. 117-37. From Boyer, Pascal & J. Wertsch (Eds). Memory in Mind and Culture. Cambridge University Press. Pp. 123-4.


“Much current historiography pits memory against history even though few authors openly claim to be engaged in building a world in which memory can serve as an alternative to history.” Klein, K.L. 2000. “On the emergence of memory in historical discourse.” Representations. 69: 127-150. P. 128. Cited in Wertsch, James. 2009. “Collective Memory.” Pp. 117-37. From Boyer, Pascal & J. Wertsch (Eds). Memory in Mind and Culture. Cambridge University Press. P. 124.


“We call those concepts and norms that seem to be shared within a group and differ from those of other groups ‘cultural.’ We call concepts and norms ‘cultural’ if people have them because other people in their group have them or had them before. This suggests that transmission of concepts and norms is at the heart of what constitutes human cultures.” Boyer, Pascal. 2009. “Cognitive Predispositions and Cultural Transmission.” Pp. 288-319. From Boyer, Pascal & J. Wertsch (Eds). Memory in Mind and Culture. Cambridge University Press. P. 288.


“All of these converge to show that all normal human minds share a number of cognitive predispositions that make certain kinds of concepts and inferences particularly likely to occur. Even though the contents of memory are different in each individual, some common principles, most of which are not available to conscious inspection, complement and organize incoming information. So some kinds of inferences tend to go in particular directions, no matter where you start from. They constitute statistical ‘attractors’ for cultural transmission.” Boyer, Pascal. 2009. “Cognitive Predispositions and Cultural Transmission.” Pp. 288-319. From Boyer, Pascal & J. Wertsch (Eds). Memory in Mind and Culture. Cambridge University Press. Pp. 291-2.


“Cognitive predispositions are not just general constraints, for example, on the amount of material that can be acquired, on the capacity of attention and memory. Cognitive predispositions also consist in specific domain-specific expectations about the kinds of objects and agents to be found in the world.” Boyer, Pascal. 2009. “Cognitive Predispositions and Cultural Transmission.” Pp. 288-319. From Boyer, Pascal & J. Wertsch (Eds). Memory in Mind and Culture. Cambridge University Press. P. 292.


“Indeed, experimental tests show that people’s actual religious concepts often diverge from what they believe they believe.” Boyer, Pascal. 2009. “Cognitive Predispositions and Cultural Transmission.” Pp. 288-319. From Boyer, Pascal & J. Wertsch (Eds). Memory in Mind and Culture. Cambridge University Press. P. 293.


“Essentialist intuitions are very robust and explicit in representations of the natural world. Animal species are intuitively construed in terms of species-specific ‘causal essences.’” Boyer, Pascal. 2009. “Cognitive Predispositions and Cultural Transmission.” Pp. 288-319. From Boyer, Pascal & J. Wertsch (Eds). Memory in Mind and Culture. Cambridge University Press. P. 297.


“Humans are extremely good at using coalitional affiliation to carry out collaborative endeavors by efficiently allocating trust among cooperators. People will spontaneously form groups where a certain degree of trust ensures co-operation and mutual benefits.... There is now ample psychological evidence for a coalitional psychology, a specific kind of inferences that apply to these trust-based groups but not to other forms of social interaction.” Boyer, Pascal. 2009. “Cognitive Predispositions and Cultural Transmission.” Pp. 288-319. From Boyer, Pascal & J. Wertsch (Eds). Memory in Mind and Culture. Cambridge University Press. P. 299.


“So a crucial component that is distinctly human may be a particular motivation to engage in coordinated action by monitoring other agents’ goals and trying to adjust one’s own behavior to these goals. This motivation, which appears very early is[in] normal human infants, is strikingly absent in experimental and observational studies of non-human apes.” Boyer, Pascal. 2009. “Cognitive Predispositions and Cultural Transmission.” Pp. 288-319. From Boyer, Pascal & J. Wertsch (Eds). Memory in Mind and Culture. Cambridge University Press. P. 311.


“... the materials of past (and present) societies are not seen as an epiphenomenal outcome of historical and social processes or as just an epistemological component through which these processes can be grasped but actually as constituent parts–even explanatory parts–of these very processes.” Olsen, Bjornar. 2010. In Defense of Things: Archaeology and the Ontology of Objects. AltaMira Press. P. 38.


“Ganti’s proposed real life criteria are these:

“(1) Holism. An organism is an individual entity that cannot be subdivided without losing its essential properties. An organism cannot remain alive if its parts are separated and no longer interact.
“(2) Metabolism. An individual organism takes in material and energy from its local environment, and chemically transforms them. Seeds are dormant and so lack an active metabolism, but they can become alive if conditions reactivate their metabolism. For this reason, Ganti makes a four-part distinction between things that are alive, dormant, dead, or not the kind of thing that could ever be alive.
“(3) Inherent stability. An organism maintains homeostatic internal processes while living in a changing environment. By changing and adapting to a dynamic external environment, an organism preserves its overall structure and organization....
“(4) Active information-carrying systems. A living system must store information that is used in its development and functioning. Children inherit this information through reproduction, because the information can be copied....
“(5) Flexible control. Processes in an organism are regulated and controlled so as to promote the organism’s continued existence and flourishing....”

“In contrast to these ‘real’ criteria, Ganti also proposed ‘potential’ life criteria. An individual living organism can fail to possess life’s potential criteria. The defining feature of potential life criteria is that, if enough organisms exhibit them, then life can populate a planet and sustain itself. Ganti proposed three:

“(1) Growth and reproduction. Old animals and sterile animals and plants are all living, but none can reproduce. So, the capacity to reproduce is neither necessary nor sufficient for being a living organism. But due to the mortality of individual organisms, a population can survive and flourish only if some organisms in the population reproduce. In this sense, growth and reproduction are what Ganti calls a ‘potential’ rather than ‘real’ life criterion.
“(2) Evolvability. ‘A living system must have the capacity for hereditary change and furthermore, for evolution, i.e. the property of producing increasingly complex and differentiated forms over a very long series of successive generations.’ Since what evolves over time are not individual organisms but populations of them, we should rather say that living systems can be members of a population with the capacity to evolve....
“(3) Mortality. Living systems are mortal.”
Bedau, Mark. 2007. “What is Life?” Pp. 455-470. From Sarkar, S. & A. Plutynski (Eds.). A Companion to the Philosophy of Biology. Blackwell. Pp. 457-8. Reference is Ganti, T. 2003. The Principles of Life. Oxford University Press. Subquote is from p. 79.


“One final category of borderline cases consists of complex adaptive systems found in nature, such as financial markets or the World Wide Web. These exhibit many of the hallmarks of life, and some think that the simplest and most unified explanation of the entire range of phenomena of life is to consider these natural complex adaptive systems to be literally alive.” Bedau, Mark. 2007. “What is Life?” Pp. 455-470. From Sarkar, S. & A. Plutynski (Eds.). A Companion to the Philosophy of Biology. Blackwell. Pp. 458-9.


“A third characteristic of life is that it generates a number of puzzles. Seven puzzles are briefly reviewed below.... [but only six listed]

“Origins. How does life or biology arise from non-life or pure chemistry?...

“Emergence. How does life involve emergence? B properties are said to emerge from A properties when the B properties both depend on, and are autonomous from, the A properties...

“Hierarchy. Various kinds of structural hierarchies characterize life. Each organism has a hierarchical internal organization, and the relative complexity of organizations of different kinds of organisms form another hierarchy....

“Continuum. Can things be more or less alive? Is life a black-or-white Boolean property, or a continuum property with many shades of gray?...

“Strong artificial life. Artificial life software and hardware raise the question whether our computer creations could ever literally be alive....

“Mind. Another puzzle is whether there is any intrinsic connection between life and mind....” Bedau, Mark. 2007. “What is Life?” Pp. 455-470. From Sarkar, S. & A. Plutynski (Eds.). A Companion to the Philosophy of Biology. Blackwell. Pp. 459-60.


“Scientific essentialism, originating from Kripke, is the philosophical view that the essence of natural kinds like water and gold is their underlying causal powers, which are discovered by empirical science. The essence of substances like water and gold turns out to be their underlying chemical composition. Life, on the other hand, is a certain kind of flexible process, not a fixed chemical substance. So unlike water or gold, life’s nature would presumably be captured by the characteristic network of processes (such as metabolism, reproduction, and sensation) that explains its characteristic causal powers. In this regard life is more like heat, which is a certain process in matter (high molecular kinetic energy). A specific temperature is a specific kind of process that can occur in all kinds of matter. Life is also a kind of process that can occur in different kinds of material, but unlike temperature not all kinds of material can be alive. Mapping the biochemical constraints on the kinds of substances that could instantiate life yields a biochemical definition of life. Note that scientific essentialism about life might be true, even if contemporary science has reached no consensus about life. Scientific essentialism is a philosophical view about the method by which life’s essence would be discovered – it is not a view about the particular content of that essence.” Bedau, Mark. 2007. “What is Life?” Pp. 455-470. From Sarkar, S. & A. Plutynski (Eds.). A Companion to the Philosophy of Biology. Blackwell. Pp. 466-7. Reference is to Kripke, S. 1980. Naming and necessity. Harvard University Press.


“In Dennett’s opinion, for example, the life/non-life distinction is a matter of degree and life is too ‘interesting’ to have an essence. In fact, contemporary biology and philosophy of biology thoroughly embrace a Darwinian anti-essentialism according to which species have no essence and their members share no necessary and sufficient properties. Instead, the similarities among the members of a species are only statistical.” Bedau, Mark. 2007. “What is Life?” Pp. 455-470. From Sarkar, S. & A. Plutynski (Eds.). A Companion to the Philosophy of Biology. Blackwell. P. 467. Reference is to Dennett, D. 1995. Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. Simon & Schuster. P. 201.


“One could embrace Darwinian anti-essentialism but still accept scientific essentialism about life. On this view, the ‘essence’ of life would be whatever process explains the phenomena of life, including life’s hallmarks, borderline cases, and puzzles.” Bedau, Mark. 2007. “What is Life?” Pp. 455-470. From Sarkar, S. & A. Plutynski (Eds.). A Companion to the Philosophy of Biology. Blackwell. P. 467.


“The idea was the embodied simulation hypothesis, a proposal that would make the idea of embodiment concrete enough to compete with Mentalese. Put simply:

“Maybe we understand language by simulating in our minds what it would be like to experience the things that the language describes.”
Bergen, Benjamin. 2012. Louder Than Words: The New Science of How the Mind Makes Meaning. Basic. P. 13.


“Meaning, according to the embodied simulation hypothesis, isn’t just abstract mental symbols; it’s a creative process, in which people construct virtual experiences–embodied simulations–in their mind’s eye....

“If meaning is based on experience with the world–the specific actions and percepts an individual has had–then it may vary from individual to individual and from culture to culture. And meaning will also be deeply personal–what polar bear or dog means to me might be totally different from what it means to you.” Bergen, Benjamin. 2012. Louder Than Words: The New Science of How the Mind Makes Meaning. Basic. P. 16.


“Contemporary cognitive psychologists maintain that the human mind comprises a host of conceptual and inferential capacities. Some of these capacities, it is claimed, dispose us to apply the concept ‘cause’ under a range of conditions, including conditions in which no causal relation obtains. Other capacities dispose us to apply one or more of a cluster of mental concepts, including ‘intention’, even when the attributed intention is absent. In general, concepts for which our conceptualizing capacities are apt to generate false positives are dubious by virtue of their psychological role.” Davies, Paul S. 2007. “What Kind of Agent Are We? A Naturalistic Framework for the Study of Human Agency.” Pp. 39-60. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 45.


“The locus where we most explicitly display our assumption that people enjoy control is in ordinary, noncoercive conversation. Such conversation presupposes, and continually replenishes, a currency of reasons for thought and action that are recognized as relevant on all sides, even if they are sometimes weighted differently; they are considerations that are recognized as legitimating or requiring various responses. Participants to a conversation treat one another as agent-controlled to the extent that they assume of each other–and indeed of themselves–that they have a capacity to track and conform to the demands of such reasons. The demands involved will range from requirements of respect for evidence, to requirements of consistency and valid argument, to requirements of fidelity to avowals and promises.” Pettit, Philip. 2007. “Neuroscience and Agent-Control.” Pp. 77-91. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 82.


“Imagine I authorize you as an interlocutor, treating you as someone with whom I can do conversational business. I will take you to have a capacity to think with recognizable reason–reason, recognizable to you–about what is the case and to act with recognizable reason on the basis of how you think....

“I call the capacity I ascribe to you in taking this view ‘conversability’.” Pettit, Philip. 2007. “Neuroscience and Agent-Control.” Pp. 77-91. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. Pp. 82-3.


“In principle, we might think that an action is agent-controlled, not in virtue of the elements in its particular etiology but in virtue of the nature or constitution of the agent in whom it is produced.” Pettit, Philip. 2007. “Neuroscience and Agent-Control.” Pp. 77-91. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 84.


“There is a good case for thinking that in practice we identify actions as agent-controlled in virtue of identifying their agents as having a suitable constitution. We do this when we identify agents as conversable or orthonomous, operating within the reach of conversationally recognizable reason.” Pettit, Philip. 2007. “Neuroscience and Agent-Control.” Pp. 77-91. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 84.


“... the self is not the unit of production in action so much as the unit of accountability.” Pettit, Philip. 2007. “Neuroscience and Agent-Control.” Pp. 77-91. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 87.


“A capacity like the capacity to be conversable or orthonomous is inevitably the product, not just of native makeup, but also of cultural development. We are not born responsible, any more than we are born free. We have to learn what responsibility requires and how to display it (as criminologists say, we have to be ‘responsibilized’).” Pettit, Philip. 2007. “Neuroscience and Agent-Control.” Pp. 77-91. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 87.


“But communication, McFarland thinks, is a behavioral innovation that changes that [the earlier evolutionary absence of any self monitoring]. Communication requires a central clearinghouse of sorts in order to buffer the organism from revealing too much about its current state to competitive organisms. In order to understand the evolution of communication, as Dawkins and Krebs showed in a classic article, we need to see it as manipulation rather than as purely cooperative behavior. The organism that has no poker face, that communicates its state directly to all hearers, is a sitting duck, and will soon be extinct. What must evolve instead is a communication-control buffer that creates (1) opportunities for guided deception, and coincidentally (2) opportunities for self-deception, by creating for the first time in the evolution of nervous systems, explicit (and more ‘globally’ accessible) representations of its current state, representations that are detachable from the tasks they represent, so that deceptive behaviors can be formulated and controlled.” Dennett, Daniel. 2007. “My Body Has a Mind of its Own.” Pp. 93-100. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. Pp. 96-7. References are: McFarland, D. 1989. “Goals, no-goals and own goals.” From Montefiore, A. & D. Noble (Eds.) Goals, No-Goals and Own Goals: A Debate on Goal-Directed and Intentional Behavior. Pp. 39-57. Unwin-Hyman. And: Dawkins, R. & J.Krebs. 1978. “Animal signals: Information or manipulation? From Krebs, J. & N. Davies (Eds). Behavioural Ecology: An Evolutionary Approach. Pp. 282-309. Blackwell.


“... explicit self-monitoring was invented to conceal our true intentions from each other while permitting us to reveal strategic versions of those intentions to others.” Dennett, Daniel. 2007. “My Body Has a Mind of its Own.” Pp. 93-100. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 98.


“A true science of action must be open to the possibility of actions not bearing the characteristic of being transparent to their perpetrator as to why they were performed.” Thalos, Mariam. 2007. “The Sources of Behavior: Toward a Naturalistic, Control Account of Agency.” Pp. 123-167. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 126.


“Furthermore, if we adopt a regularity conception of causation (as we ought to do), conceiving of a cause as (roughly) a chance-raiser (a causes b when a raises the chances of b) as they do in the applied sciences of engineering and medicine, it becomes quite clear that being a cause is emphatically not a mark of being an agent: many more things can serve as causes than can qualify as agents.” Thalos, Mariam. 2007. “The Sources of Behavior: Toward a Naturalistic, Control Account of Agency.” Pp. 123-167. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 133.


“An agent makes things happen. To say ‘makes a thing happen’ is to say something ambiguous as between ‘triggers a causal chain culminating in that event’s occurrence’ and ‘brings the thing about in a controlled fashion.’ To the latter, on the present account, is to perform a management or executive function.” Thalos, Mariam. 2007. “The Sources of Behavior: Toward a Naturalistic, Control Account of Agency.” Pp. 123-167. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 146.


“First, a good deal is now know about executive function in children. The major findings are these: executive function develops incrementally, stage-like and in an order that dovetails with development in other cognitive functions, especially in perception, category acquisition, organization of categories, and application of rules (e.g., the rules of logic).” Thalos, Mariam. 2007. “The Sources of Behavior: Toward a Naturalistic, Control Account of Agency.” Pp. 123-167. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 147.


“But when once agents are modeled in the distributed fashion I have been urging, with perhaps some increment of central processing, very interesting possibilities come open. For if, furthermore, there can be some set of processes that resemble interpenetration of the units so that an overlap of basic agentic entities is a substantively different agentic entity from two such entities interacting merely at the ‘peripheries,’ then genuine molecularization of agents becomes possible.” Thalos, Mariam. 2007. “The Sources of Behavior: Toward a Naturalistic, Control Account of Agency.” Pp. 123-167. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 156.


“The empirical turn, which I have been sponsoring, views the self not as a matter of identity in a transcendental sphere, but rather as a matter of constitution in the empirical order–and conceives of constitution in the political sense: a constitution is a protocol embodying or realizing the principles that govern our unavoidably parallel proceedings. It is a matter of government and structure, not a matter of identity.” Thalos, Mariam. 2007. “The Sources of Behavior: Toward a Naturalistic, Control Account of Agency.” Pp. 123-167. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 159.


“A sender’s strategy is a rule that specifies for each state the signal to be sent in that state....”

“A receiver’s strategy is a rule that specifies what action to take for each possible message received....”

“An equilibrium is a pair of sender’s strategy and receiver’s strategy with the property that neither player can do better by unilateral deviation from the equilibrium....”

“Starting without prior meaning or communication, how are we supposed to get to the most desirable sort of equilibrium? Once there, why do we stay there? Lewis offers answers to both these questions. A signaling system, like any convention, is maintained because a unilaterial deviation makes everyone strictly worse off. If the structure of the game and the strategies of the players are common knowledge, then everyone knows that unilateral deviation does not pay. Lewis, following Schelling, finds that conventions are selected by virtue of prior agreement, precedent, or salience. In the context of the present discussion, a gratuitous assumption of prior agreement or precedent appears to beg the question. That leaves salience: ‘uniqueness of a coordination equilibrium in a preeminently conspicuous respect.” Lewis’s salient equilibria – Schelling’s focal equilibria – have some psychologically compelling quality that attracts the attention of the decision makers.

“It is apparent that Lewis has made a major contribution to the understanding of meaning.” Skyrms, Brian. 1996. Evolution of the Social Contract. Cambridge University Press. Pp. 82-4. References: Lewis, D. 1969. Convention. Harvard University Press. Schelling, T. 1960. The Strategy of Conflict. Oxford University Press.


“Computational neuroscience in general, and attractor networks in particular offer a way to bridge the gap between the abstract concepts of attractor spaces and the concrete physical material of brains that are inside bodies that are inside environments.” Spivey, Michael. 2007. The Continuity of Mind. Oxford University Press. P. 90.


“As we will argue, a social group is a complex system which cannot be reduced to its basic elements – individual people and their intrapersonal processes.” Lisiecka, Karolina. 2013. “Group as a Unit of Analysis.” Pp. 209-25. Nowak, Andrzej, K. Winkowska-Nowak & D. Bree (Eds). Complex Human Dynamics, Understanding Complex Systems. Springer. P. 210.


“According to Sawyer, contemporary sociology lacks a theory of emergence that would explain the mechanism of individual-to-structure transition through social interaction. He claims that even though emergentists reckon interaction as central, they have not supported their theories with the close empirical study of symbolic interaction. It is not clear how exactly crystalized social structure emerges from dynamic social interaction.” Lisiecka, Karolina. 2013. “Group as a Unit of Analysis.” Pp. 209-25. Nowak, Andrzej, K. Winkowska-Nowak & D. Bree (Eds). Complex Human Dynamics, Understanding Complex Systems. Springer. P. 216. Reference is Sawyer, R. Keith. 2005. Social Emergence: Societies as Complex Systems. Cambridge University Press.


“In his [Sawyer’s] Emergence Paradigm, he identifies two additional layers of social reality, localized in between the interaction level and social structure level: ephemeral and stable emergents. They describe the level of conversational encounter and emergence of collective behavior during social interaction and influence individuals in the sense that they ‘constrain the flow of interaction.’ Sawyer perceives social interaction as a continuing recreation of emergent patterns at the immanent layers of reality.” Lisiecka, Karolina. 2013. “Group as a Unit of Analysis.” Pp. 209-25. Nowak, Andrzej, K. Winkowska-Nowak & D. Bree (Eds). Complex Human Dynamics, Understanding Complex Systems. Springer. P. 216. Reference is Sawyer, R. Keith. 2005. Social Emergence: Societies as Complex Systems. Cambridge University Press.


“These theories on social emergence maintain that describing groups at only two levels (individual and systemic) is too simplified. Beneath the level of ‘group-as-a-whole’, there are lower-level sub-structures related to symbolic interaction and communication: collective memory, discourse patterns, roles and positions of members in interaction.” Lisiecka, Karolina. 2013. “Group as a Unit of Analysis.” Pp. 209-25. Nowak, Andrzej, K. Winkowska-Nowak & D. Bree (Eds). Complex Human Dynamics, Understanding Complex Systems. Springer. P. 217.


“So far, Arrow et al. have offered the most elaborated theory of the group as a complex system. They postulate the existence of three levels at which causal dynamics in groups can be described. Local dynamics can be briefly described as typical daily routines (‘activities’) of a group. Those daily routines may be represented in a form of a coordination network with links connecting members via tasks they perform together and tools they share in order to fulfill these tasks. Once the coordination network is established, the group begins to function as a collective entity to which the rules of global dynamics can be applied. Global dynamics refers to variables reflecting the state of [the] system as a whole. They are not ‘simple aggregates of the local variables’ but emergent features of the system. Global variables are in ongoing recursive relation to local variables, as they simultaneously arise from and constrain group operations at the local level. The third level, contextual dynamics, relates to external forces that affect both local and global dynamics. It reflects requirements of the environment in which a group is operating.” Lisiecka, Karolina. 2013. “Group as a Unit of Analysis.” Pp. 209-25. Nowak, Andrzej, K. Winkowska-Nowak & D. Bree (Eds). Complex Human Dynamics, Understanding Complex Systems. Springer. P. 218. Reference is Arrow, H., J. McGrath & J. Berdahl. 2000. Small Groups as Complex Systems. Formation, Coordination, Development, and Adaptation. Sage.


“[W]e do not, right now, have any evidence for atomism. We now have no evidence that there will be a final theory, no evidence that such a theory will postulate anything that could serve as a mereological atom, and no evidence that such a theoretical postulate will correspond to an ontological atom as opposed to a boringly decomposable composite. Evidence for fundamentality is lacking thrice over.” Schaffer, Jonathan. 2003. “Is there a fundamental level?” Nous. 37: 498-517. P. 505. Quoted in Thalos, Mariam. 2011. “Two Conceptions of Fundamentality.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences. 41(2): 151-177. P. 153.


“The assessment of atomism, to be thoroughgoing, must evaluate the entire reductionist package of model-building strategies, which includes: (1) independent building-blocks; and (2) no internal relations. Existing assessments of atomism have focused almost exclusively on the question of building blocks. On such assessments, the refusal of atomism amounts to entertaining instead the proposal that every entity has parts, and littler entities are comprised of littler parts–a proposal that Jonathan Schaffer refers to as infinite descent, according to which there are no indivisibles:

“What would a metaphysic of infinite descent look like? The most striking feature of an infinite descent is that no level is special. Infinite descent yields an egalitarian ontological attitude which is at home in the macrophysical world precisely because everything is macro. Mesons, molecules, minds, and mountains are in every sense ontologically equal. Because there can be no privileged locus for the causal powers, and because they must be somewhere, they are everywhere. So infinite descent yields an egalitarian metaphysic which dignifies and empowers the whole of nature.”
Thalos, Mariam. 2011. “Two Conceptions of Fundamentality.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences. 41(2): 151-177. Pp. 155-6. Subquote is from Schaffer, Jonathan. 2003. “Is there a fundamental level?” Nous. 37: 498-517. P. 512-3.


“... Durkheim argued that in modern societies, by contrast with traditional ones, the highly complex division of labor results in ‘organic solidarity.’ This is a condition in which different specializations in employment and social roles create dependencies that tie people to one another. In less modern societies, which he referred to as ‘mechanical societies’ held together by ‘mechanical solidarity,’ subsistence farmers live in communities that are self-sufficient and knit together by a common heritage. Mechanical solidarity thus comes from homogeneity, when people feel connected through similar work, educational and religious training, and life-style. The result of increasing division of labor, according to Durkheim, is that individual consciousness (and consequently ‘individualism’) emerges as distinct from collective consciousness–often finding itself in conflict with collective consciousness. And so in modern societies, or at least so he predicted, we should see the dissolution of solidarity.

“Durkheim’s analysis is provocative, suggesting the following paradox: to the extent that people are tied together by relations of economic dependence, to that same extent they experience themselves as individuals distinct from others whose concerns and lifeways are not always overlapping; and so to this same extent they will experience the Existentialists’ angst over the burden of individual responsibility.” Thalos, Mariam. 2011. “Two Conceptions of Fundamentality.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences. 41(2): 151-177. P. 160.


“The conception of a System renders the bond fundamental to an entity’s reality. Indeed it renders the bond itself an object to which fundamentality may attach. From a Systems perspective, bonding is the fundamental entity-building process. In fact, from a Systems perspective, bonding is the most fundamental characteristic or feature of (nonatomic) objecthood. Objects spring into existence as a result of many (and overlapping) such bonds.” Thalos, Mariam. 2011. “Two Conceptions of Fundamentality.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences. 41(2): 151-177. P. 162.


“Thus the contrast between atomism and systemism, as I shall call it, is the contrast, in ontology, between atoms (on the one hand) and situated entities (on the other). Situated entities are the subject of dynamical Systems theory.” Thalos, Mariam. 2011. “Two Conceptions of Fundamentality.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences. 41(2): 151-177. P. 162.


“This fact [“displacement” when bonds are removed or added to give simplicity at new levels] reveals something about Systems as such. Systems come into existence full with bonds, and they de-Systematize when these bonds dissolve–as many Systems (like flocks) are very much apt to do. Reductions in degrees of freedom is key to the process–it is indeed the key metaphysic by which Systems are built....

“Thus what is fundamental to Systemhood is the bond. In strong numbers, bonds in situ can effect reductions in degres of freedom.” Thalos, Mariam. 2011. “Two Conceptions of Fundamentality.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences. 41(2): 151-177. P. 166.


“It has been said that we need Systems analysis because the word is complicated. Because there are far more ‘basic’ entities, more bodies, more particles, and hence more quantities than a mathematical model founded on ‘fundamental’ physical laws can handle. Moreover, things are supposed to get many orders of magnitude more messy as we broaden the scope of concern to topics outside of physics. The necessity for a less fastidious manner of analysis is a matter of practicality–an ‘applied’ rather than a theoretical matter–not a matter of principle. Systems analysis is thus, according to this idea, a concession to human frailties. And we stoop to Systems analysis–where we do–because it is a simple and incontestable fact of life that only superhuman intellect or yet-unattained mathematical facility can handle the computational complexities we face when we attempt to treat in theory the many-entity systems we must navigate in real life. Complexity is, on this conception of things that is characteristically pragmatic, an occasion for being practical–for yielding to a lesser form of analysis.” Thalos, Mariam. 2011. “Two Conceptions of Fundamentality.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences. 41(2): 151-177. P. 171.


“For if systemism is true, then we must amend the atomist’s conception of the world in the following way: in addition to possessing structure at smallest scales, the world possesses fundamental structure also at higher scales: our world is possessed of layers of emergent order. And this is the order that Systems analysis is designed to capture. Systems analysis gives us a general, recursive analysis–that is to say, a meta-analysis–of how order at the next scale is structured, in neutral dynamical/metaphysical (not special-scientific) terms. Systems analysis is thus the metaphysics of higher order. And it rests on an alternative conception of both fundamentality and complexity.

“Consequently to the critic of systemism we are bound to reply: we require Systems analysis because there is more order–and correspondingly less complexity–in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in the philosophy of atomism.” Thalos, Mariam. 2011. “Two Conceptions of Fundamentality.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences. 41(2): 151-177. P. 171.


“Material culture studies in various ways inevitably have to emphasize the dialectical and recursive relationship between persons and things: that persons make and use things and that the things make persons.” Tilley, Christopher, W. Keane, S. Kuechler-Fogden, M. Rowlands & P. Spyer (Eds). 2006. Handbook of Material culture. Sage. P. 4.


“The difference [between a prejudice-free concept of objectivity vs an assumption-free one] is absolutely crucial because many sceptical and relativist arguments against the possibility of objectivity conflate the first and second understandings, so that the (achievable) task of removing all prejudices from arguments is treated as if it were the (unachievable) task of removing all assumptions. The idea that we should aim to remove prejudices from our decisions might be difficult to realize in some cases, but the idea of a prejudice-free judgement makes perfectly good sense. By contrast, that we should aim to remove all prior beliefs is not merely impossible to realize, the idea does not stand up to scrutiny.” Gaukroger, Stephen. 2012. Objectivity: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. Pp. 5-6.


“So, truth and justification are different things. On the views of objectivity that we have looked at up to now, the first (lack of prejudice) and the third (some procedure to decide between competing hypotheses) have taken objectivity to be a matter of justification, not truth.” Gaukroger, Stephen. 2012. Objectivity: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. P. 8.


“This is the fourth understanding of objectivity, and in philosophical and scientific discussions from the 18th century onwards, we find a move away from a negative understanding of objectivity as freedom from prejudice or bias, towards the positive idea that objectivity consists in accurate representation.” Gaukroger, Stephen. 2012. Objectivity: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. P. 9.


“Francesco Patrizzi, in his Dialogues on History of 1560, had attempted to show that the historian can either be impartial, or informed, but not both. He begins by rejecting secondary sources as virtual hearsay, and he divides primary sources into the partisan and the objective. Then, replying on a number of Machiavellian assumptions about the nature of rules, he sets up a dichotomy between the partisan observer and the objective observer. Partisan observers–in this case, those sympathetic to the ruler–in virtue of being partisan, have access to the relevant information, because the ruler can rely upon them, but because they are partisan they will not provide an objective account of this information. By contrast, objective observers, namely those who are prepared to be critical of the ruler if this is merited, will not have the ruler’s confidence, and so will not have access to the source of the relevant information.” Gaukroger, Stephen. 2012. Objectivity: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. P. 31.


“Objectivity comes under justification, not under truth.” Gaukroger, Stephen. 2012. Objectivity: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. P. 55.


“What happened was that, in the 17th century, objectivity replaced truth in the role of cognitive guidance. If truth guided argument by showing where arguments should end, objectivity took the opposite route, constraining how arguments should begin and proceed. It was in the newly devised notion of objectivity, in which legal argument played the most important single role, that cognitive guidance was now sought.” Gaukroger, Stephen. 2012. Objectivity: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. P. 59.


“As they point out, objectivity is costly: in different contexts, securing objectivity in scientific atlases may demand sacrifices in pedagogical efficacy, colour, depth of field, and even diagnostic utility.” Gaukroger, Stephen. 2012. Objectivity: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. P. 60. “[T]hey” refers to Daston, L. & P. Galison. 2007. Objectivity. Zone Books.


“The idea that objectivity in modern science consists in the elimination of arbitrary judgements is a useful move beyond that of objectivity simply consisting in the elimination of prejudice or bias.” Gaukroger, Stephen. 2012. Objectivity: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. P. 64.


“In other words, not only are there degrees of objectivity, but objectivity is something that can be learned and improved upon through practice.” Gaukroger, Stephen. 2012. Objectivity: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. P. 65.


“... any attempt to assimilate objectivity and truth faces the difficulty that they behave in different ways. Note in particular that objectivity comes in degrees. One theory can be more objective than another. But a theory cannot be truer than another, because truth is an absolute notion; something is either true or it is not.” Gaukroger, Stephen. 2012. Objectivity: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. P. 66.


“Whereas truth is absolute and does not come in degrees, objectivity only comes in degrees.” Gaukroger, Stephen. 2012. Objectivity: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. P. 66.


“Indeed, some of the deepest and most persistent problems for understanding objectivity arise when one tries to make it absolute, or at least inadvertently thinks of it in absolutist terms.” Gaukroger, Stephen. 2012. Objectivity: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. P. 67.


“In his Trust in Numbers, Porter explains how effective quantification has never been a matter simply of discovery, but always also of administration, hence of social and technological power. Quantitative objectivity is a form of standardization, the use of rules to confine and tame the personal and subjective. In other words, through quantification, a new realm has been created in which, rather than securing objectivity, objectivity has been created.” Gaukroger, Stephen. 2012. Objectivity: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. P. 72. Reference: Porter, T.M. 1995. Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life. Princeton University Press.


“The flock is softly assembled, in that it is composed of a temporary coalition of entities, engaged in [a] collaborative task. Some softly assembled systems exhibit interaction-dominant dynamics, as opposed to component-dominant dynamics. In component-dominant dynamics, behavior is the product of a rigidly delineated architecture of modules, each with predetermined functions; in interaction-dominant dynamics, on the other hand, coordinated processes alter one another’s dynamics and it is difficult, and sometimes impossible, to assign particular roles to particular components.” Anderson, Michael, M. Richardson & A. Chemero. 2012. “Eroding the Boundaries of Cognition: Implications of Embodiment.” Topics in Cognitive Science. 4: 717-730. P. 719.


“There is, for example, ample evidence that verb retrieval tasks activate brain areas involved in motor control functions, and naming colors and animals (i.e., processing nouns) activates brain regions associated with visual processing.” Anderson, Michael, M. Richardson & A. Chemero. 2012. “Eroding the Boundaries of Cognition: Implications of Embodiment.” Topics in Cognitive Science. 4: 717-730. P. 720.


“And there are myriad demonstrations of interactions between language and motor control more generally, perhaps most striking the recent findings that manipulating objects can improve reading comprehension in school-age children.” Anderson, Michael, M. Richardson & A. Chemero. 2012. “Eroding the Boundaries of Cognition: Implications of Embodiment.” Topics in Cognitive Science. 4: 717-730. P. 720.


“In addition, it appears that the functional complexes supporting tasks in newer–more recently evolved–cognitive domains utilize more and more widely scattered circuitry than do the complexes supporting older functionality like vision and motor control.” Anderson, Michael, M. Richardson & A. Chemero. 2012. “Eroding the Boundaries of Cognition: Implications of Embodiment.” Topics in Cognitive Science. 4: 717-730. P. 721.


“Indeed, there is growing evidence that neural circuits are soft-assembled and interaction dominant. Several studies have found evidence of 1/f scaling in human neural activity. More recently, He, Zempel, Snyder, and Raichle have extended these latter findings by demonstrating that human arrhythmic brain activity contains mutually nested and coupled frequency scales–lower frequencies of brain activity modulate the amplitude of higher frequencies–a dynamic property not only characteristic of interaction-dominant systems but only exhibited by interaction-dominant systems.” Anderson, Michael, M. Richardson & A. Chemero. 2012. “Eroding the Boundaries of Cognition: Implications of Embodiment.” Topics in Cognitive Science. 4: 717-730. P. 721. Reference is He, B.J., J. Zempel, A. Snyder & M. Raichle. 2010. “The temporal structures and functional significance of scale-free brain activity.” Neuron. 66(3): 353-369.


“For example, Dotov, Nie, and Chemero and Nie, Dotov, and Chemero describe experiments designed to induce and then temporarily disrupt an extended cognitive system. Participants in these experiments play a simple video game, controlling an object on a monitor using a mouse. At some point during the 1-minute trial, the connection between the mouse and the object it controls is disrupted temporarily before returning to normal. Dotov et al. found 1/f scaling at the hand-mouse interface while the mouse was operating normally, but not during the disruption. As discussed above, this indicates that, during normal operation, the computer mouse is part of the smoothly functioning interaction-dominant system engaged in the task; during the mouse perturbation, however, the 1/f scaling at the hand-mouse interface disappears temporarily, indicating that the mouse is no longer part of the extended interaction-dominant system. These experiments were designed to detect, and did in fact detect, the presence of an extended cognitive system, a synergy that included both biological and non-biological parts. The fact that such a mundane experimental setup (using a computer mouse to control an object on a monitor) generated an extended cognitive system suggests that extended cognitive systems are quite common.” Anderson, Michael, M. Richardson & A. Chemero. 2012. “Eroding the Boundaries of Cognition: Implications of Embodiment.” Topics in Cognitive Science. 4: 717-730. Pp. 722-3. References are: Dotov, D., L. Nie & A. Chemero. 2010. “A demonstration of the transition from readiness-to-hand to unreadiness-to-hand.” PLoS ONE. 5: e9433. Nie, L., D. Dotov & A. Chemero. (in press) “Readiness-to-hand, extended cognition, and multifactality.” Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Meetin gof the Cognitive Science Society.”


“ECS [embodied cognitive science] strongly suggests that cognitive systems are not confined to brains, or even brains and bodies; instead, they sometimes encompass portions of the environment and, as we outline in the following section, this includes the most significant of environmental objects, namely, other human agents.” Anderson, Michael, M. Richardson & A. Chemero. 2012. “Eroding the Boundaries of Cognition: Implications of Embodiment.” Topics in Cognitive Science. 4: 717-730. P. 723.


“Research on the perception and execution of social affordances–possibilities for action that are performed by more than one person or require more than one person to perform–provides additional support for the claim the two individuals can form a coherent perception-action unit or synergy.” Anderson, Michael, M. Richardson & A. Chemero. 2012. “Eroding the Boundaries of Cognition: Implications of Embodiment.” Topics in Cognitive Science. 4: 717-730. P. 725.


“Perception, action, judgment, language, and motor control use the same neural real estate assembled into distinct coalitions. Moreover, multiple faculties are often involved in tasks that have been thought to be the province of just one of them. The upshot of this is that ‘embodied cognition’ is a misnomer. Embodied cognition is not just cognition and it does not just happen in the body.” Anderson, Michael, M. Richardson & A. Chemero. 2012. “Eroding the Boundaries of Cognition: Implications of Embodiment.” Topics in Cognitive Science. 4: 717-730. P. 727.


“Agamben’s central interest is in the problematic character of political power of the modern state as sovereignty, which resides in nomos, or law, in the ordering of the polis. Nature is characterized by its violence; the polis, by its order, and yet the paradox of sovereignty is that it requires a monopoly of violence. The Hobbesian sovereign overcomes the state of nature by incorporating that violence into its power to order men and things.” Turner, Bryan. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory, 3rd Edition. 2008. Sage Publications. P. 2. Reference is to Agamben, G. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. University of Stanford Press.


“Several criticisms of social constructionism can be considered. First, it is a mistake to assume that social constructionism represents one single, more or less coherent, doctrine. There are in fact a great variety of different and contradictory constructionist perspectives. Different types of constructionism present very different accounts of human agency, and thus have different implications for an understanding of social relationships. Secondly, constructionism tends to ignore or deny the importance of the phenomenological world. This issue is especially important in the debate about the social construction of the body. Cultural representations of the body are historical, but there is also an experience of embodiment that can only be understood by grasping the body as a lived experience....

“A third criticism is that constructionism as a cultural theory does not ask whether some social phenomena are more socially constructed than others.” Turner, Bryan. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory, 3rd Edition. 2008. Sage Publications. Pp. 11-2.


“We can re-interpret Bourdieu as saying that primitive or raw desires (nature) are reconstituted in the habitus (nurture) where they emerged as socially sanctioned tastes or preferences.” Turner, Bryan. The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory, 3rd Edition. 2008. Sage Publications. P. 13. Reference is Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge University Press.


“But blind changes in the syntax affect the structure of the execution sequence and are hardly ever acceptable. As a consequence the adaptive surface of a computer program is extremely rugged, with peaks separated by deep, wide gorges. Evolution of computer program by variation and selection is unworkable. The same would be true of biological evolution if DNA were like a digital computer program. Most changes would alter the structure of the execution sequence and would lead to teratologic behavior. But in fact changes in DNA are much more like changes in the parameters of a dynamic process.” Conrad, Michael. 1990. “The geometry of evolution.” 1990. BioSystems. 24:61-81. P. 73.


“... ideas are symbols of group membership, and thus culture is generated by the moral–which is to say emotional–patterns of social interaction.” Collins, Randall. 2004. Interaction Ritual Chains. Princeton University Press. P. xi.


“Thus, there is an ongoing mutually modifying chicken-and-egg interplay–or responsive cohesion–between theories and observations.” Fox, Warwick. 2006. A Theory of General Ethics: Human Relationships, Nature, and the Built Environment. MIT Press. P. 90.


“We encounter the world multimodally, through our multiple senses, our emotions, our actions, and our reflections. Language, however, is amodal: the word ‘chair’ retains its senses regardless of whether we meet it in spoken or written mode, printed on paper or screen or spelled out in neon lights or alphabet blocks, in Morse code or Braille. Cognition, recent neurocognitive research shows, begins not with the amodal symbols of language but with multimodal experiences. In simulation, explains Lawrence Barsalou, we reactivate ‘perceptual, motor, and introspective states acquired during experience with the world, body, and mind ... the brain captures states across the modalities and integrates them with a multimodal representation stored in memory. Later, when knowledge is needed to represent a category, multimodal representations captured during experiences ... are reactivated to simulate how the brain represented perception, action, and introspection associated with it.’”

“In other words we think, remember, and imagine by mentally simulating or reactivating elements of what we have previously perceived, understood, enacted, and experienced.” Boyd, Brian. 2009. On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction. Harvard University Press. Pp. 155-6. Subquote is from Barsalou, Lawrence. 2008. “Grounded cognition.” Annual Review of Psychology. 59:617-645. Pp. 618-9.


“Juvenile play deprivation among both rats and humans correlates with serious social malfunction in later life. Young rats experimentally deprived of play grow up unable to judge how and when to defend themselves and veer between being far too aggressive and far too passive.” Boyd, Brian. 2009. On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction. Harvard University Press. P. 179.


“Play is widespread among animals, but pretend play appears to be an almost exclusively human activity.” Boyd, Brian. 2009. On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction. Harvard University Press. P. 181.


“It is important to realize that in physics today, we have no knowledge of what energy is.” Feynman, Richard, R. Leighton & M. Sands. 1963. The Feynman Lectures on Physics: Volume I. Addison-Wesley. P. 4-2.


“It [law of “conservation of energy”] states that there is a certain quantity, which we call energy, that does not change in the manifold changes which nature undergoes. That is a most abstract idea, because it is a mathematical principle; it says that there is a numerical quantity which does not change when something happens.” Feynman, Richard, R. Leighton & M. Sands. 1963. The Feynman Lectures on Physics: Volume I. Addison-Wesley. P. 4-1.


“A culture, like an individual, is a more or less consistent pattern of thought and action.” Benedict, Ruth. 1934. Patterns of Culture. P. 46.


“The written word, by contrast [to face-to-face speaking], is untrustworthy and corrupting because it is detached from the actions, honor, and character of whoever uttered it.” McNeely, Ian & L. Wolverton. 2008. Reinventing Knowledge: From Alexandria to the Internet. W.W. Norton. P. 10.


“‘Modernity’ occurs when observers observe themselves and other observers as one possibility among very many others. Observers and cultures are seen in this book as networks of communication and meaning. For those living in these cultures, they appear as forms of life, as ways to make a living, or as lifeworlds. When seen sociologically, cultures are observers in their own right. They observe other cultures, themselves over time, and also their niches in the world.” Fuchs, Stephan. 2001. Against Essentialism: A Theory of Culture and Society. Harvard University Press. P. 2.


“If there are constants, this is because they are being held constant by an observer. When this happens, essences appear, along with things-in-themselves or natural kinds. Essences prosper in the deep cores of cultures, where they house that which they cannot even consider, let alone deconstruct. The literature has many different terms for this core, including paradigm, tacit knowledge, practices, ethnomethods, common sense, and pretheoretical understanding.” Fuchs, Stephan. 2001. Against Essentialism: A Theory of Culture and Society. Harvard University Press. P. 2.


“An implication is that while all cultures are constructed, not all of them are constructivist, in the sense of understanding themselves as but one possible culture among others.” Fuchs, Stephan. 2001. Against Essentialism: A Theory of Culture and Society. Harvard University Press. P. 2.


“Systems and networks are relational, not essential–what things are they are for an empirical observer, and what these things can do depends on how they are related to things of a similar sort. The opposite philosophy, essentialism, holds that things are what they are because that is their nature, essence, or definition. Common sense is essentialist in this sense, since it–along with much of social science, philosophy, and cognitive science–validates persons, agency, mental states, free will, and the rest of the humanist and liberal inventory.” Fuchs, Stephan. 2001. Against Essentialism: A Theory of Culture and Society. Harvard University Press. P. 3.


“Merging systems and network theories yields a theory of social structure that distinguishes four social observers–encounters, groups, organizations, and networks. Society takes place in these modes of association.” Fuchs, Stephan. 2001. Against Essentialism: A Theory of Culture and Society. Harvard University Press. P. 4.


“As a variable, as something that can be different as well as weaker and stronger, personhood has various degrees of depth. Most observers see only a fraction of a surface. A select few intimates are invited backstage.” Fuchs, Stephan. 2001. Against Essentialism: A Theory of Culture and Society. Harvard University Press. P. 6.


“In relationalism, things are what they are because of their location and movement in a network or system of forces; they do not assume a fixed and constant position in the network because of their essential properties.” Fuchs, Stephan. 2001. Against Essentialism: A Theory of Culture and Society. Harvard University Press. P. 16.


“Once variation is allowed, an added advantage is that we do not really have to make a philosophical choice for, or against, essentialism. Essentialism itself turns into an outcome of certain networks. Essentialism is how a network works when it protects its foundations.” Fuchs, Stephan. 2001. Against Essentialism: A Theory of Culture and Society. Harvard University Press. P. 16.


“Distinctions belong in a network of related distinctions. This network is the observer. An observer is anything equipped to apply distinctions to the world or, more precisely, that part of the world which is an observer’s niche.” Fuchs, Stephan. 2001. Against Essentialism: A Theory of Culture and Society. Harvard University Press. P. 18.


“Self-similarity across a more or less demarcated network of distinctions creates a ‘culture.’” Fuchs, Stephan. 2001. Against Essentialism: A Theory of Culture and Society. Harvard University Press. P. 19.


“Part of the problem is that the term ‘will’ gets applied to at least three somewhat independent functions: the initiation of movement (which corresponds to the Cartesian connection of thought and action–the function that Ryle found unnecessary), the ownership of actions, which gives you the sense that they come from your true self (the one that Wegner shows to be a psychological construction), and the maintenance of resolutions against short-sighted impulses.” Ainslie, George. 2007. “Thought Experiments That Explore Where Controlled Experiments Can’t: The Example of Will.” Pp. 169-96. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 170.


“By contrast, as modern society progressively widens our freedom of choice, pathologies of willpower have become the most common preventable cause of death and disability in young and middle-aged people. These are not limited to failures of willpower, seen in addictions to alcohol, recreational drugs, cigarettes, food, gambling, credit card abuse, and many less obvious forms of preferring smaller, sooner (SS hereafter) satisfactions to substantially larger but later (LL) ones; in addition to these failures there are the overly narrow, rigid wills seen in obsessive compulsive personality disorder, anorexia nervosa, and many character pathologies both named and unnamed.” Ainslie, George. 2007. “Thought Experiments That Explore Where Controlled Experiments Can’t: The Example of Will.” Pp. 169-96. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 171.


“My hypothesis is that hyperbolic discount curves are continually putting us into intertemporal Prisoner’s Dilemmas–cooperate with future selves for the long run or splurge for the present moment. The most powerful solution is simply to recognize this state of affairs so that our current decision becomes a test case for how we can expect to decide similar choices generally. With such a perception our expected reward from having a consistent intention is staked on cooperating with our future selves, and the reward is sharply reduced if we defect to an impulsive alternative. Although people conceive the mechanics of this contingency variously, under the rubrics of morality, principle, personal intention, and even divine help, we uniformly experience resolve when we have an adequate stake in a particular plan, and guilt or at least foreboding when a lapse causes loss of part of this stake. That is, the kind of guilt that arises from a failure of resolve represents your accurate perception that you have reduced the credibility of your promises in similar situations and perhaps generally, making intertemporal cooperation harder. The threat of this reduced credibility, I have argued, is the basis of willpower.” Ainslie, George. 2007. “Thought Experiments That Explore Where Controlled Experiments Can’t: The Example of Will.” Pp. 169-96. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 174.


“Willpower is simply the perception of current choices as test cases for expectations of future choices.” Ainslie, George. 2007. “Thought Experiments That Explore Where Controlled Experiments Can’t: The Example of Will.” Pp. 169-96. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 185.


“That is, I take selves to be narrated structures that enhance individuals’ predictability, both to themselves and to others.” Ross, Don. 2007. “The Economic and Evolutionary Basis of Selves.” Pp. 197-226. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 203.


“A moment’s reflection reminds us that almost all our cognitive power depends on finding structure in time, that is, building complex representations from the serial presentation of independently ambiguous ‘takes’: language, action planning and execution, scene perception and object constancy, reasoning, narrative, and memory of every sort all presuppose an ability to embed temporal information in perception and cognition.” Lloyd, Dan. 2007. “Civil Schizophrenia.” Pp. 323-48. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 332.


“Even at this level of abstraction we can think of ordinary brain function as the flow of information through a recurrent network. And we can think of schizophrenia as a modification of that flow.” Lloyd, Dan. 2007. “Civil Schizophrenia.” Pp. 323-48. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 332.


“The definitive account of time is due to Edmund Husserl, who described it in lectures given in 1905. His fundamental observation was that our conscious perceptual experience of a scene before us right now is not exhaustively constituted by the occurrent sensory information available. In addition to sensation, all perception incorporates a nonsensory ‘apprehension’; appearances include both sensations and apprehensions. The contents of the apprehension are manifold, but central to all of them is the awareness of the temporal context of the present sensation. The presently experienced context enfolds both future and past. The future ‘appears’ as an anticipation of what will or might happen in the seconds and minutes, ahead. Husserl called this anticipation ‘protension.’ At the same time the past appears as a nonsensory awareness of what has just transpired. Husserl called this form of primary memory ‘retention.’ Between protention and retention, the incoming stream of sensation is the ‘primal impression.’ Our experience of the present, then is not simply the intake of information before us, but is a triptych of protention, primal impression, and retention. Subjective temporality is ‘thick’ with protentive and retentive layers, in effect adding phenomenal temporal dimensions to the thin line of linear, objective time.” Lloyd, Dan. 2007. “Civil Schizophrenia.” Pp. 323-48. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 336.


“Husserl’s deeper point is that we cannot imagine experience of either change or stasis without temporal information being part of the present consciousness of things.” Lloyd, Dan. 2007. “Civil Schizophrenia.” Pp. 323-48. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. P. 337.


“Rather, temporality is the basis for the subjective sense of reality itself. Since both stability and change are essentially temporal experiences, every element of the experienced world is inflected by temporality. Objects get (or lose) their objectivity by their trajectory through a complex counterpoint of protention and retention, and by exactly the same calculus we siphon off the subjective component of consciousness. Subjective and objective are both aspects of experienced time.” Lloyd, Dan. 2007. “Civil Schizophrenia.” Pp. 323-48. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. Pp. 337-8.


“Schizophrenic symptomatology and phenomenology suggest that phenomenal reality is robust. But, although the feel of the real is not easily overcome, the actual correspondence to the physical world is a fragile one, dependent on the smooth functioning of a recurrent net with billions of nodes.” Lloyd, Dan. 2007. “Civil Schizophrenia.” Pp. 323-48. From Ross, Don, D. Spurrett & H. Kincaid. Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context. MIT Press. Pp. 342-3.


“Categorization serves two important functions: it provides an efficient system for storing the endless variety of sights, sounds, and events that we encounter, and it provides a structure for making new inferences and predictions.” Gelman, Susan. 2009. “Essentialist Reasoning about the Biological World.” Pp. 7-16. From Berthoz, Alain & Y. Christen. Neurobiology of “Umwelt”: How Living Beings Perceive the World. Springer. P. 7.


“... children have more difficulty creating a category than reasoning about a category that has already been established.” Gelman, Susan. 2009. “Essentialist Reasoning about the Biological World.” Pp. 7-16. From Berthoz, Alain & Y. Christen. Neurobiology of “Umwelt”: How Living Beings Perceive the World. Springer. P. 13.


“The evolutionary trajectory of hominids was one of increasingly shared cognitive work – group decision-making, transmission of skill, sharing of knowledge, and division of cognitive labor. This trend led toward complex distributed social systems, which also served as the means to achieve distributed cognitive work.” Donald, Merlin. 2007. “The slow process: A hypothetical cognitive adaptation for distributed cognitive networks.” Journal of Physiology - Paris. 101: 214-222. P. 214.


“The most obvious example of culture’s real physical impact on brain development is literacy skill. Literacy is a fairly recent historical change, with no precedent in archaic human cultures; the vast majority of the world’s languages have never developed an indigenous writing system. Yet certain dominant modern cultures are not only literate, but also heavily dependent on mass literacy for much of their cognitive work.” Donald, Merlin. 2007. “The slow process: A hypothetical cognitive adaptation for distributed cognitive networks.” Journal of Physiology - Paris. 101: 214-222. P. 215.


“Distributed cognition is a useful paradigm in which to view the developing brain. From birth, the rapidly growing human brain is immersed in a massive distributed cognitive network culture. The network ‘interface’ of the brain to culture is a social one. It usually consists of unwitting ‘carriers’ of the culture: parents, relatives, peers, who convey crucial information about where to direct attention, what to notice, and what to remember. The human infant’s brain seeks such input from the start.” Donald, Merlin. 2007. “The slow process: A hypothetical cognitive adaptation for distributed cognitive networks.” Journal of Physiology - Paris. 101: 214-222. P. 216.


“The first two hominid transitions – from episodic to mimetic, and from mimetic to mythic, were mediated largely by neuro-biological change, while the third transition, to the theoretic mode, was heavily dependent on changes in external, non-biological, or artificial, memory technology....”

“Each of these stages was marked by complex modifications in hominid survival strategies that undoubtedly involved many different changes in skeletal anatomy, brain anatomy, emotional responsivity, intelligence, memory, social organization, reproductive strategies, and temperament, among many other factors.” Donald, Merlin. 2007. “The slow process: A hypothetical cognitive adaptation for distributed cognitive networks.” Journal of Physiology - Paris. 101: 214-222. P. 218.


“The transactional and distributed nature of social cognition itself is more difficult to study. But it must be studied, because social cognition and its consequence, mindsharing cultures, are key to understanding the unique nature of the human mind.” Donald, Merlin. 2007. “The slow process: A hypothetical cognitive adaptation for distributed cognitive networks.” Journal of Physiology - Paris. 101: 214-222. P. 219.


“Half a century ago, Hebb proposed that there were only two kinds of memory record in the nervous system. One of these, short-term memory (STM) traces (later re-labeled as working memory, or WM), which I call ST-WM traces, are electro-chemical in origin, and constitute the active focus of activity in the brain at any given moment. The other kind of trace, or long-term memory (LTM), consists of structural changes, mostly in the form of altered synaptic connections.” Donald, Merlin. 2007. “The slow process: A hypothetical cognitive adaptation for distributed cognitive networks.” Journal of Physiology - Paris. 101: 214-222. P. 220. Referencs are to Hebb, D.O. 1949. The Organization of Behavior: A Neuropsychological Theory. John Wiley & Sons. Also, Hebb, D.O. 1963. “The semiautonomous process: its nature and nurture.” American psychologist. 18: 16-27.


“Hebb’s criterion for the existence of ST-WM was the delayed response, which cannot be demonstrated in many species that are undoubtedly capable of binding simple stimuli. Thus, a very short bound trace is different: a briefer neural trace that lacks a ST-WM mechanism to give it life beyond the immediate presence of stimulation from the environment. Simple binding and ST-WM thus exist in two different temporal ranges, with the second capable of sustaining its activity for many seconds, autonomously of external stimulation.” Donald, Merlin. 2007. “The slow process: A hypothetical cognitive adaptation for distributed cognitive networks.” Journal of Physiology - Paris. 101: 214-222. P. 220.


“Neither the paradigms of binding studies nor those of ST-WM studies hint at the existence of a class of active neural traces that can last for hours on end, governing decisions and maintaining the general direction of behavior and thought. Yet this class of trace must exist, given the overwhelming evidence of autonomous sustained imagination, thought, and planning in human social life. There must necessarily be a third kind of neural process that corresponds in its time parameters to a broader period of temporal integration. This kind of trace cannot be as ephemeral as instantaneous binding or ST-WM; nor can it be as static as a permanent structural synaptic change. I have called this kind of longer neural trace ‘intermediate-term governance’, or ITG.” Donald, Merlin. 2007. “The slow process: A hypothetical cognitive adaptation for distributed cognitive networks.” Journal of Physiology - Paris. 101: 214-222. Pp. 220-1.


“Such a perspective [where self-organization depends on system-specific details] draws important grounding from the work of John Doyle and his colleagues, who compare a number of different internet topologies based on the statistical and the engineering approach. What they find is that those topologies which are designed to optimise performance under existing constraints are effective but improbable, whereas networks described as ‘scale-free’ are probable, but extremely ineffective. Indeed, they conclude that the ‘likely’ topologies ‘have such bad performance as to make it completely unrealistic that they could reasonably represent a highly engineered system’. They suggest, and I concur, that there is a message here of great importance to biology – namely that biologists, like engineers, have good reason to value specificity. As well as hierarchy. Indeed, I suggest that specificity and hierarchy are the critical components of organised complexity, and that, together, they hold the key to the emergence of that feature that joins biological systems with engineering systems, and that separates them from the systems with which physics is concerned, i.e. function.” Keller, Evelyn Fox. 2007. “Contenders for life at the dawn of the twenty-first century: approaches from physics, biology and engineering.” Interdisciplinary Science Reviews. Vol 32, No. 2. Pp. 113-122. P. 120.


“DST [dynamic systems theory] provides a scientific approach to spiritual development compatible with many theological and philosophical understandings, while using principles of wide explanatory power across other scientific fields.” Cupit, C.G. “The marriage of science and spirit: dynamic systems theory and the development of spirituality.” International Journal of Children’s Spirituality. Vol. 12, No. 2, August 2007. Pp. 105-116. P. 115.


“There are four classes of Idols which beset men’s minds. To these for distinction’s sake I have assigned names,–calling the first class Idols of the Tribe; the second, Idols of Cave; the third, Idols of the Market-place; the fourth, Idols of the Theatre....

“The Idols of the Tribe have their foundation in human nature itself, and in the tribe or race of men. For it is a false assertion that the sense of man is the measure of things. On the contrary, all perceptions as well of the sense as of the mind are according to the measure of the individual and not according to the measure of the universe....

“The Idols of the Cave are the idols of the individual man. For every one (besides the errors common to human nature in general) has a cave or den of his own, which refracts and discolours the light of nature; owing either to his own proper and peculiar nature; or to his education and conversation with others, or to the reading of books, and the authority of those whom he esteems and admires, or to the differences of impressions, accordingly as they take place in a mind preoccupied and predisposed or in a mind indifferent and settled; or the like....

“There are also Idols formed by the intercourse and association of men with each other, which I call Idols of the Market-place, on account of the commerce and consort of men there....

“Lastly, there are Idols which have immigrated into men’s minds from the various dogmas of philosophies, and also from wrong laws of demonstration. These I call Idols of the Theatre; because in my judgment all the received systems are but so many stage-plays, representing worlds of their own creation after an unreal and scenic fashion.” Bacon, Francis. 1620. Novum Organum: Book I. From 1955. Selected Writing of Francis Bacon. Random House Modern Library. Pp. 469-71.


“... the fundamental assumption of classical cognitive science that cognition is the manipulation of symbols according to formal rules is being replaced by a view according to which the mechanisms that explain behaviour are non-symbolic or sub-symbolic, and cognition consists in the adaptation of an agent to its environment.” Mirolli, Marco & D. Parisi. “Language as a Cognitive Tool.” Minds & Machines. 2009. 19:517-528. P. 519.


“In the present paper we have described some simple computer simulations that show that language can improve one’s categories and can be an useful aid to memory, both if it mediates social communication and if it is used to talk to oneself as private or inner speech. But we argue that the use of language for oneself does not improve only categorization and memory, but almost any human cognitive function.” Mirolli, Marco & D. Parisi. “Language as a Cognitive Tool.” Minds & Machines. 2009. 19:517-528. P. 526.


“Naturalist reductionism and semiological idealism are still alive and kicking, and they continue to form the two poles of an epistemological continuum along which everyone endeavoring to better understand the relationships between humans and non-humans must be positioned.” Descola, Philippe. 2013. The Ecology of Others. Translated by G. Godbout & B. Luley. Prickly Paradigm Press. P. 27.
 

"Anthropology defines its object of study, Culture or cultures, as the system of mediation with Nature invented by humanity, a distinctive attribute of Homo sapiens which includes technical ability, language, symbolic activity and the capacity to assemble in collectivities that are partly freed from biological legacies."  Descola, Philippe. 2013. The Ecology of Others. Translated by G. Godbout & B. Luley. Prickly Paradigm Press. P. 35,


“In short, a dual world is the constitutive dimension of the object of anthropology. One could even say that this science was born as a response to the challenge of reducing the gap between the two orders of reality just established by the theory of knowledge in the second half of the nineteenth century.” Descola, Philippe. 2013. The Ecology of Others. Translated by G. Godbout & B. Luley. Prickly Paradigm Press. P. 37.


“In denying to modern dualism the structuring function that it had hitherto been granted, in emphasizing that, everywhere and always, humans enlist crowds of non-humans in the fabric of communal life, symmetrical anthropology places on an equal footing Amazonian tribes and biological laboratories, pilgrimages to Our Lady and synchrotrons.” Descola, Philippe. 2013. The Ecology of Others. Translated by G. Godbout & B. Luley. Prickly Paradigm Press. P. 71.


“On one side, we find the partisans of embodied or situated cognition, and disciples of Gibson and all those who challenge the dualism of mind and body in order to emphasize the structuring of understanding as an emergent property stemming from the interactions between the organism and its environment; on the other, the neo-Chomskyians, who defend a modular theory of the mind conceived as an assemblage of specialized devices for the treatment of information. In granting an immoderate privilege to individual experience, the first group fails to explain the stabilization of shared representations and the role they play in the structuring of practices; in universalizing a priori categories of thought, the second group falls short of accounting for the diversity of its expressions according to contexts.” Descola, Philippe. 2013. The Ecology of Others. Translated by G. Godbout & B. Luley. Prickly Paradigm Press. Pp. 73-4.


“One does not have to be a great seer to predict that the relationship between humans and nature will, in all probability, be the most important question of the present century.” Descola, Philippe. 2013. The Ecology of Others. Translated by G. Godbout & B. Luley. Prickly Paradigm Press. P. 81.


“The research of neurobiologists on the mechanisms of perception; of developmental psychologists on the formation of ontological categories; of primatologists and prehistorians on the schemes of technical action; or of biogeographers on the evolution of biocenoses, offer many precious lessons on the modes of apprehending and interacting with non-humans.” Descola, Philippe. 2013. The Ecology of Others. Translated by G. Godbout & B. Luley. Prickly Paradigm Press. P. 86.


“One can surmise that all of the schemes available to humanity for defining relationships with the components of the world exist under the form of mental structures, partly innate, partly stemming from the properties of social life. But these structures are not all compatible with each other, so that every cultural system, and each type of social organization, is the product of a triage and a combination which, although contingent, is often repeated in history with comparable results.” Descola, Philippe. 2013. The Ecology of Others. Translated by G. Godbout & B. Luley. Prickly Paradigm Press. Pp. 87-8.


“In contrast to the cognitive sandwich approach of conventional cognitive science, in which ‘cognition takes place inside the head, wedged between perception and action,’ situated cognition is seen ‘as reaching beyond individuals in their physical and social environments.’” Waters, Dennis. 2012. “From extended phenotype to extended affordance: distributed language at the intersection of Gibson and Dawkins.” Language Sciences. 34: 507-12. P. 508. First subquote is from Hurley, S. 1998. Consciousness in Action. Harvard University Press. Second subquote is from Wilson, R.A. & Clark, A. 2008. “How to situate cognition: letting nature take its course.” Aydede, M. & P. Robbins (Eds). The Evolutionary Emergence of Language. Cambridge University Press. Pp. 55-77.


“In discussing animal communication, for example, Dawkins emphasized that ‘communication is the means by which an animal makes use of another animal’s muscle power.’” Waters, Dennis. 2012. “From extended phenotype to extended affordance: distributed language at the intersection of Gibson and Dawkins.” Language Sciences. 34: 507-12. P. 508. Reference is to Dawkins, R. & J.R. Krebs. 1978. “Animal signals: information or manipulation?” From Krebs, J.R., & N.B. Davies (Eds). Behavioural Ecology. Blackwell. Pp. 282-309.


“Words, like gestures, can... be used to direct the sense organs of the hearer toward parts of the environment he would not otherwise perceive,....” Gibson, J.J. 1966. The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems. Houghton-Mifflin. P. 26. Cited in Waters, Dennis. 2012. “From extended phenotype to extended affordance: distributed language at the intersection of Gibson and Dawkins.” Language Sciences. 34: 507-12. P. 508.


“The lookout [vervet monkey who gives a warning call] appears to be part of the extended phenotype of every other monkey; it is as though the lookout’s eyes were its own. Meanwhile, the remaining monkeys appear to be part of the extended phenotype of the lookout. When the lookout calls, the others all behave in a comparable way. Within this narrow but important context of responding to common predators, the monkeys create and share a phenotype that is not only extended but also distributed. Each monkey is like a node in the extended phenotype of all of the others.

“What, then, can we say about the extended affordance of a shared, distributed extended phenotype? Certainly it means that any time the environment affords a threat from an eagle, leopard, or snake, the perception of that affordance by any monkey allows all of the other monkeys to perceive it vicariously and respond appropriately....

“Each monkey is like a node in the common extended affordance of all of the others, while retaining its own unique set of extended affordances, i.e., its unique niche. The shared extended affordance is defined with respect to a dynamic, constantly moving population of monkeys, each with a set of eyes, a set of vocal cords.” Waters, Dennis. 2012. “From extended phenotype to extended affordance: distributed language at the intersection of Gibson and Dawkins.” Language Sciences. 34: 507-12. P. 511.


“... the sovereign is the point of indistinction between violence and law, the threshold on which violence passes over into law and law passes over into violence.” Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford University Press. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. P. 32.


“... constituting power, when conceived in all its radicality, ceases to be a strictly political concept and necessarily presents itself as a category of ontology. The problem of constituting power then becomes the problem of the ‘constitution of potentiality’, and the unresolved dialectic between constituting power and constituted power opens the way for a new articulation of the relation between potentiality and actuality....” Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford University Press. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. P. 44.


“In thus describing the most authentic nature of potentiality, Aristotle actually bequeathed the paradigm of sovereignty to Western philosophy. For the sovereign ban, which applies to the exception in no longer applying, corresponds to the structure of potentiality, which maintains itself in relation to actuality precisely through its ability not to be. Potentiality is that through which Being founds itself sovereignly, which is to say, without anything preceding or determining it other than its own ability not to be. And an act is sovereign when it realizes itself by simply taking away its own potentiality not to be, letting itself be, giving itself to itself.” Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford University Press. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. P. 46.


“The sovereign sphere is the sphere in which it is permitted to kill without committing homicide and without celebrating a sacrifice, and sacred life–that is, life that may be killed but not sacrificed–is the life that has been captured in this sphere.” Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford University Press. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. P. 83.


“What is captured in the sovereign ban is a human victim who may be killed but not sacrificed: homo sacer. If we give the name bare life or sacred life to the life that constitutes the first content of sovereign power, then we may also arrive at an answer to the Benjaminian query concerning ‘the origin of the dogma of the sacredness of life.’ The life caught in the sovereign ban is the life that is originarily sacred–that is, that may be killed but not sacrificed–and, in this sense, the production of bare life is the originary activity of sovereignty. The sacredness of life, which is invoked today as an absolutely fundamental right in opposition to sovereign power, in fact originally expresses precisely both life’s subjection to a power over death and life’s irreparable exposure in the relation of abandonment.” Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford University Press. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. P. 83.


“Life is sacred only insofar as it is taken into the sovereign exception, and to have exchanged a juridico-political phenomenon (homo sacer’s capacity to be killed but not sacrificed) for a genuinely religious phenomenon is the root of the equivocations that have marked studies both of the sacred and of sovereignty in our time.” Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford University Press. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. P. 85.


“The understanding of the Hobbesian mythologeme in terms of contract instead of ban condemned democracy to impotence every time it had to confront the problem of sovereign power and has also rendered modern democracy constitutionally incapable of truly thinking a politics freed from the form of the State.” Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford University Press. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. P. 109.


“The ban is the force of simultaneous attraction and repulsion that ties together the two poles of the sovereign exception: bare life and power, homo sacer and the sovereign.” Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford University Press. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. P. 110.


“If it is true that the figure proposed by our age is that of an unsacrificeable life that has nevertheless become capable of being killed to an unprecedented degree, then the bare life of homo sacer concerns us in a special way. Sacredness is a line of flight still present in contemporary politics, a line that is as such moving into zones increasingly vast and dark, to the point of ultimately coinciding with the biological life itself of citizens. If today there is no longer any one clear figure of the sacred man, it is perhaps because we are all virtually homines sacri.” Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford University Press. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. Pp. 114-5.


“... Foucault continued to investigate the ‘processes of subjectivization’ that, in the passage from the ancient to the modern world, bring the individual to objectify his own self, constituting himself as a subject and, at the same time, binding himself to a power of external control.” Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford University Press. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. P. 119.


“It is almost as if, starting from a certain point, every decisive political event were double-sided: the spaces, the liberties, and the rights won by individuals in their conflicts with central powers always simultaneously prepared a tacit but increasing inscription of individuals’ lives within the state order, thus offering a new and more dreadful foundation for the very sovereign power from which they wanted to liberate themselves.” Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford University Press. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. P. 121.


“It is not the free man and his statutes and prerogatives, not even simply homo, but rather corpus that is the new subject of politics.” Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford University Press. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. P. 124.


“The paradox from which Arendt departs is that the very figure who should have embodied the rights of man par excellence–the refugee–signals instead the concept’s radical crisis.” Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford University Press. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. P. 126.


“Declarations of rights represent the originary figure of the inscription of natural life in the juridico-political order of the nation-state. The same bare life that in the ancien regime was politically neutral and belonged to God as creaturely life and in the classical world was (at least apparently) clearly distinguished as zoe from political life (bios) now fully enters into the structure of the state and even becomes the earthly foundation of the state’s legitimacy and sovereignty.” Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford University Press. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. P. 127.


“If Nazism still appears to us as an enigma, and if its affinity with Stalinism is still unexplained, this is because we have failed to situate the totalitarian phenomenon in its entirety in the horizon of biopolitics. When life and politics–originally divided, and linked together by means of the no-man’s land of the state of exception that is inhabited by bare life–begin to become one, all life becomes sacred and all politics becomes the exception.” Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford University Press. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. P. 148.


“What concerns us most of all here, however, is that in the biopolitical horizon that characterizes modernity, the physician and the scientist move in the no-man’s-land into which at one point the sovereign alone could penetrate.” Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford University Press. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. P. 159.


“Every interpretation of the political meaning of the term ‘people’ must begin with the singular fact that in modern European languages, ‘people’ also always indicates the poor, the disinherited, and the excluded. One term thus names both the constitutive political subject and the class that is, de facto if not de jure, excluded from politics.” Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford University Press. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. P. 176.


“But starting with the French Revolution, when it becomes the sole depositary of sovereignty, the people is transformed into an embarrassing presence, and misery and exclusion appear for the first time as an altogether intolerable scandal.” Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford University Press. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. Pp. 178-9.
 

“In any case, however, the entry of zoe into the sphere of the polis–the politicization of bare life as such–constitutes the decisive event of modernity and signals a radical transformation of the political-philosophical categories of classical thought.” Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford University Press. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. P. 4.


“Placing biological life at the center of its calculations, the modern State therefore does nothing other than bring to light the secret tie uniting power and bare life, ...” Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford University Press. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. P. 6.


“Everything happens as if, along with the disciplinary process by which State power makes man as a living being into its own specific object, another process is set in motion that in large measure corresponds to the birth of modern democracy, in which man as a living being presents himself no longer as an object but as the subject of political power. These processes–which in many ways oppose and (at least apparently) bitterly conflict with each other–nevertheless converge insofar as both concern the bare life of the citizen, the new biopolitical body of humanity.” Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford University Press. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. P. 9.


“If anything characterizes modern democracy as opposed to classical democracy, then, it is that modern democracy presents itself from the beginning as a vindication and liberation of zoe, and that it is constantly trying to transform its own bare life into a way of life and to find, so to speak, the bios of zoe.” Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford University Press. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. P. 9.


“In carrying out the metaphysical task that has led it more and more to assume the form of a biopolitics, Western politics has not succeeded in constructing the link between zoe and bios, between voice and language, that would have healed the fracture.” Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford University Press. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. P. 11.


“The isolation of the sphere of pure Being, which constitutes the fundamental activity of Western metaphysics, is not without analogies with the isolation of bare life in the realm of Western politics.” Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford University Press. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. P. 182.


“Yet precisely these two empty and indeterminate concepts [bare life and pure Being] seem to safeguard the keys to the historico-political destiny of the West. And it may be that only if we are able to decipher the political meaning of pure Being will we be able to master the bare life that expresses our subjection to political power, just as it may be, inversely, that only if we understand the theoretical implications of bare life will we be able to solve the enigma of ontology. Brought to the limit of pure Being, metaphysics (thought) passes over into politics (into reality), just as on the threshold of bare life, politics steps beyond itself into theory.” Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford University Press. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. P. 182.


“Every attempt to rethink the political space of the West must begin with the clear awareness that we no longer know anything of the classical distinction between zoe and bios, between private life and political existence, between man as a simple living being at home in the house and man’s political existence in the city.” Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford University Press. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. P. 187.